Finally we have a rock band that again conveys the true spirit of rock and roll. Jimmy Eat World
at last jump ship from the indie rock scene and plunge straight into the mainstream world with reckless abandon.
This band blows me away, recalling all sorts of styles on this beautiful masterpiece, ranging
from new wave rock groups like The New Romantics and The Cars to contemporaries such as Weezer. Everything
here screams a perfect rock record, from Tom Linton's soaring angst-ridden vocals to Jim
Adkins's classic-fueled guitar bonfires. At times Bleed American rocks with pain and passion, and
at other times arouses tears in delicate beauty and tenderness. A three-chord bombast trickles all over this
record, beginning with a thunderclap on the emotive and powerful title track, which crashes and bleeds with
constant energy through all of its three minutes. Similar rockers occur on the next two tracks, the smile-inducing
A Praise Chorus, and the positive classic rocker and lead single The Middle. A slight
break comes next with the pleasing coffee-house ballad Your House, after which the record dives into a downtuned
crunch with Sweetness, which features a classic bitchin' chorus. The next song, Hear You Me,
is a melancholy and heart-wrenchingly sweet ballad that easily could have been another hit single, one of my personal
favorites on the album. If You Don't, Don't runs along through an excellent rock attack, similar to
The Middle and remindful of the better power-pop groups of the late seventies and early eighties. The progressive
emo rocker Get It Faster is both mysterious, potent, and punchy, culminating in a heroic Thin Lizzy style
dual-harmonizing guitar lead. The rest of the album doesn't falter much in intelligence, the final tracks including
ominously sweet Cautioners, and although it rehashes the chorus melody in A Praise Chorus, it still moves me,
and the straight ahead nostalgic jab of Authority Song kicks like The Cars once did twenty years before. The last song is the only lapse,
a strange progressive ballad that drags when in the wrong mood, but still done with adeptness. This band
is a testament to genuine rock, proving that an album in today's world can lack vulgarity and tired tricks and rock above the rest.
Bleed American shows a true expertise, both in lyrical content as well as musical, the band staying tight and professional throughout the
entire record. And how many bands today can attest to that? I feel a rebirth of classic guitar-driven
rock music peering around the corner, and Jimmy Eat World are one of the leaders of the revolution.
Rating: 4/5
Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
(Dreamworks, 2001)
