There’s about 12 years between when I first saw Jimmy Eat World, and when I began to listen to them in earnest. I saw them open for Green Day during the American Idiot tour in 2005 and remember enjoying a couple of songs. Their set remains quite blurry in memory; frankly I was simply waiting for Green Day to begin.

The 2nd time I watched Jimmy Eat World was November 2024. I watched them with my then-bandmate Raph. It was deeply special for many reasons, one of which is simply that we loved singing their songs together. We bought MERCH together that night (a rarity for me, Ian MacKaye has long been my justification for my miserly and frankly joyless approach to merch) - a Jimmy Eat World beanie that I promptly lost playing football that winter at some point, while Raph bought a “Bleed American” t-shirt that his partner Robin gifted me last week after he passed away. We both left the gig with Jim Adkins picks that he’d tossed into the crowd (truly he tossed upward of 50, I’d never seen anything like it, a litter of picks strewn willy-nilly I tell you).

It makes sense that I was only able to appreciate Jimmy Eat World to the depth that I do once I was well into my late twenties. Teenage me would have found Jim Adkins' voice too earnest and too sweet. Not enough tension, I’d say. Searching for rough edges and dissonance in a band that embraced harmony, written off as just a bit too poppy for me probably, adolescent contrarianism rejecting my “steady diet of The Beatles and other incredibly earnest guitar pop” musical upbringing. Jimmy Eat World are now probably the band that’s most defined my musical life; a band that marries my love of harmony with punk, unashamedly saccharine and emotional with how they describe love and despair, and perhaps the band most-covered by me with my favourite songwriting partner.

Anyway, “Bleed American”. This album has over the years fallen into a comfortable 3rd place in my “Jimmy Eat World albums power rankings” but it was their first album I fell in love with. Re-listening to it again and again this past week, here’s three songs to appreciate:

  • A Praise Chorus: “crimson and clover, over and over” - feels fitting to appreciate a song that’s in turn a lovesong to other songs. Beyond the many references to other artists (Shondells, Madness, Promise Ring, Motley Crue?), the lyric that always sticks with me is “I wanna always feel like part of this was mine” - a snappier summary of music in its social context, the listener/artist relationship especially, than my old lecturers in the Edinburgh University music department could muster. The kick pattern in the intro of this song - returning in between lines in the verse, the outro in bits - is one of the first things I tried to perfect on the drums also.

  • Sweetness: “sinking into sweet uncertainty” You know, I just don’t know a song quite like this one. It’s in a rush from when it begins. You only ever get the bass to settle on a root note right at the end of a chorus, forever suspended and passed on from add9 chord to add9 chord. A deeply sweet bridge of “oohs” and “aahhs” to finally breathe. A song that’s all about the chase and the feeling of unknowns with crushes, and I guess written to match that perfectly. It has become a karaoke favourite for me when rooms have it.

  • Cautioners: “take your steps away with hesitance” I’ve only begun to appreciate this song in the last year or two for how perfect it is. I’ve always liked it but in context of the mid 2000s emo it’s an extraordinary composition. It embraces being slow, cautiously slow, drawn out, marching steadily. Punctuated by these low bass staccatos. It’s a bizarre drum beat and pedal note holding it together the whole song - try putting it on and tapping along, and finding just how off-beat hose hi-hat beats are in a song that’s so steady, so serene. A simple octave on the chorus, no flavour to the harmony, just the octave to keep it pure, almost the entire song until the bridge finally gives us the comfort of thirds coming in. Before you know it, you’re in a final chorus with about 4 guitars ringing out, the piano and bass that’s been with us the whole way, and the exact same drum beat we started with. Give it a go, feel it wash over you.