Review: Jimmy Eat World - "Damage"
I know what you are thinking. How can this site give the album anything but glowing reviews and you are partly right. The other side is that I am old enough to realize we aren't getting another "Clarity". Do I think the band will ever write that type of record? No. Do I want them to? Sure, but I'd that's not fair to the band. We all want the one album to repeat over and over again and if that was the case I would be a huge NOFX fan. Nothing wrong with NOFX but you know what you are getting. Each album by Jimmy Eat World that crosses the desk gets a ton of listens before I reserve judgement. I take each album as it is and separate the time and place to give it a fresh look. The bottom line. There is a reason why this band still is here like clockwork.
I loved parts of "Invented", I never took out "Chase This Light" out of my car for a year and "Futures" ranks up there with my favorite songs and albums by the band. "Damage", the band's 8th studio album, will make any fan of Jimmy Eat World happy, even you jaded "Static Prevails" hold outs. I was pretty apprehensive at first, hearing tracks like "ByeBye Love" and "Appreciation" that seems to gloss over. I thought, this can't be right, so I took the album, threw on my favorite pair of headphones and sat in the darkness. I started to hear the hooks, the big choruses and small flashes that gave me goosebumps. Everything you want from an album is in here, you just need to listen. Will this album catapult the band into the stratosphere as "Bleed American"? Simply, no, but thanks to that album, the boys can now tour around the world, sell out some bigger venues. So when they start playing the hits, you can smile knowing you were there before and accept that they gotta play em to appease a large audience that only knows those songs. That leaves the folks like us to enjoy the 2/3 of new songs in the set on the upcoming tour and close our eyes and know the band will still be going, making new music and changing. I don't want the same album, I don't want the same songs each tour. New is better and "Damage" is exactly what you want.
