Review: "Bleed American" by Jimmy Eat World
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By Kevin Bicknell
Special to CNN
(CNN) -- Jimmy Eat World's "Bleed American" has a grabber of an opening. Pounding drums introduce a faster version of Sonic Youth's chaotically random chords. A scared confused vocal rants "I'm not alone 'cause the TV's on/ I'm not crazy 'cause I take the right pills ..... every day!" The lyric calls up a man in a rented room, staring into a cracked mirror and trying to hold on to a razor-thin margin of sanity. The singer holds your attention the way a suicide on a ledge does as you wonder whether he'll jump.
But you never find out. The words dissolve into the kind of amorphous angst ("salt, sweat, sugar on the asphalt/our hearts littering the topsoil") that too many grunge bands have used to avoid telling real stories. It's a small betrayal that is echoed in every cut on the record. Each track features some kind of hook -- a melody, a lyric, some harmony -- that draws the listener into it, before petering out into the clichs of the new corporate rock. The songs make promises they don't keep.
That's not to deny the band's knack for the hook, or their understanding of how to make a rock and roll song move. To appreciate how rare this quality is, you only need to listen to the inert sludge pit that calls itself "rock radio," where sub-Journey wannabes like Tool, Live, Creed and Incubus compete to see who can be the most lifeless mediocrity with any attempt at song-craft or style dismissed as "selling out" (while taking this "integrity" all the way to the bank).
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Every song on "Bleed American" grabs your attention in some way, whether it's the "Crimson and Clover" cop on "A Praise Chorus;" the crazed piano solo that erupts in the middle of "Sweetness;" the perfect harmonies of "The Authority Song" and the concept: the singer's frustration that a John Mellencamp song is the only decent song on the jukebox; the sheer lift the band gives "If You Don't, Don't."
But this craft only partially camouflages the band's essential lack of personality. While the group's mentors Blink 182 find an entire worldview in teenage brattiness, and similar bands mine suburban discontent (Fountains of Wayne) and alcoholic despair (The Gin Blossoms), you never really get a sense of what Jimmy Eat World is about. For every interesting lyric ("I think the whole world can hear me clear my throat") there is another one about chasing your dreams, going for it, being yourself, etc. (How long before we hear these songs in sneaker commercials?) Too often the group affects an ordinary-guy banality reminiscent of N'Sync or the Backstreet Boys.
This is especially true of the record's ballads. "Sundown" and "Cautioners" recall the treacle that's played on "Dawson's Creek" whenever the characters experience a soul-searching moment (which is like, every five minutes). "Hear You Me" is somewhat worse, a eulogy for a dead fan that seems less about the deceased than about the sensitivity of the singer.
Jimmy Eat World appear to be at a crossroads, torn between the catchy, hook-laden rock and roll they are capable of (and which, as bands like Big Star or the Silos could tell them, don't sell) and the unimaginative tripe which currently rules the marketplace .They could go either way, but they might do well to pay attention to one of their own lyrics: "I see it around me/ I see it in everything/ I could be so much more than this."
No kidding.
