Jimmy Eat World

Matthew Keene

Reviewing The Arts

3/4/2012

Review of “Futures”

            Growing up in the dusty burbs of Mesa, Arizona, Jimmy Eat World have spent the last twenty years finding new riffs and punk hooks to their sound while still taking on a staunch criticism of modern Americana. Their album “Futures”, released in 2004, is a swell of emotion over what it is like to be young and not sure what to do with your life. The opening title-track “Futures” kicks in with an arena stomping rhythm and continues taking hold of the listener though “Just Tonight”. “Futures” captures the feeling of apathy towards the world’s problems while you walk the line of late high school/early college and fantasize about what the future holds for you. “We close our eyes while the nickel and dimed take the streets, completely.” “Just Tonight,” is about the pressure of staying with someone for the sake of having someone, and the song title implies that tonight is the last night I’m fooling around before waking up and fooling around again tomorrow claiming that will be the last night.

            “Work”, the album’s first single shows the consequence of doing just that begging the lover Adkins seems to be addressing through-out the record that they need to “get out of this place while we still have time”. The following songs “Kill” and “World You Loved” are hitting the crossroads of tragedy in life. “Kill” embodies the sense of staying with someone even though they are killing you and “The World You Love” carries on the sentiment in the biting line: “We’re only just as happy as everyone else seems to think we are”. 

            The songs “Pain”, “Drugs or Me” and “Polaris” cover the self-hatred from wasting time with drugs. When one builds up great expectations for a great future a drolling disappointment is around the corner and drugs are always there to ruin bright futures. “Pain” was another hit for the record and goes back to the old Jimmy Eat World roots of stabbing down on a single power-chord.

            The hardest tack on the album “Nothing Wrong” brings us to the point of a break down. You feel like the growing youth has reached a tipping point and the rounded drum riff captures the feeling of a protest gone awry. The song “Night Drive” rings us back to the lovesick boyfriend who seems to be narrating the record and has an optimistic feel to the aimless driving these characters have done for so long now. “23” is the closing track and the end of a journey that started with the ambitious but apathetic seventeen-year-old in “Futures”. The album takes you from the fist in the air of a guy who has his whole life ahead of him and captures the pain of wasting time as he puts his hands in his pockets teetering on the edge of 25. It is not a pessimistic album but a heart-full one and will go down as one of the better representatives for what emo is supposed to capture.