Jimmy Eat World played MGM Music Hall – 6/20
Emo/alt-rock vets Jimmy Eat World marked 25 years of their landmark Bleed American at MGM, with support from Thrice and Boys Against Girls.
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Twenty-five years on, Jim Adkins still sounds slightly baffled by the reach of his band’s biggest hit. His initial nonchalance towards “The Middle” – a self-described “simple” song that came to him almost suspiciously quickly – has long been on record, and was echoed in his introduction to it as track three of Bleed American at Boston’s MGM Music Hall on Saturday night. He came around on it soon enough of course, as did the rest of the world, and the song would serve as the band’s big breakthrough. Hearing it during a Jimmy Eat World set is certainly no novelty these days, but in the context of an anniversary play-through of the album it stems from, the 00s’ most enduring anthem of self-acceptance gained new poignance as an elucidation of the band’s story.
As the followup to Clarity – the sprawling emo cult-classic whose commercial struggles famously got the band dropped from their major label deal – the punchy, hooks-galore Bleed American, with “The Middle” at its heart, represented a pivot that eventually solidified them as a institution. As such, it’s no surprise that Adkins and company decided to take the whole record for a spin on the road for its 25th – a trek that rolled into an absolutely packed house in Boston.
The evening played out as a sort of Jimmy Eat World history lesson. The band opened with a short suite of Clarity tunes to set the stage, with the earworm single “Lucky Denver Mint” – which Adkins pointed to as a sort of Bleed American blueprint – leading straight into the record’s charging title track. The longstanding core foursome of Adkins, guitarist Tom Linton, bassist Rick Burch and drummer Zach Lind played those opening numbers at the stage’s edge, their real estate made deliberately smaller with a simple lighted set piece, before expanding to a bigger, brighter layout with an auxiliary keyboardist once the main event began – a clever bit of choreography playing out one era of the band transitioning to another. The main set brought no big surprises or tracklist shakeups, but did prove that Bleed American‘s appeal extends well beyond its extremely famous single. “Sweetness” also brought the house down, naturally, but so too did deeper cuts like a seething “Get It Faster” or the infectious “Authority Song” (a personal favorite).
Following the “My Sundown” set closer, the band returned to round things out by digging out a Bleed-era b-side they’d never played live prior to this tour, plus a handful of favorites from followup Futures and its contemporary Stay On My Side Tonight EP. The whole night never reached beyond the confines of the band’s 1999-2005 run, but didn’t feel stuck in the past. The crew are an airtight force on stage, for one, but the songs also remain vital – even the one you’ve heard more times than you can count.
Opening up the night was an interesting one-two of Touch and Go Records vets Girls Against Boys and the emotive post-hardcore outfit Thrice. GvsB kicked things off with a dose of their delightfully scuzzy noise rock, the pummeling low end of their unusual double-bass lineup and a somewhat sickly lighting treatment briefly transforming the glitzy MGM into a grimy rock club. Thrice, meanwhile, couldn’t have played it more differently, throwing themselves headfirst into an alternately heavy and soaring set that was lit as dramatically as their songs unfolded.
Scroll below for a look at the whole night.
