Jimmy Eat World plays Clarity at Metro
Long-running band plays touchstone emo album on its 10th anniversary
Jason Odell
Saturday night, the Metro hosted a show that would’ve been unthinkable a decade ago: Jimmy Eat World playing its third album, Clarity, in its entirety to an enthusiastic, seemingly beyond-capacity crowd.
"Unthinkable" because at the time of its release in early 1999, Clarity hardly had the markings of a touchstone record. Unimpressed by its underperforming predecessor, 1996's Static Prevails, Capitol Records almost didn’t release Clarity. Instead, it made the band release a teaser EP to gauge interest. Only after “Lucky Denver Mint” briefly appeared on the playlist of influential radio station K-ROCK did Capitol give Clarity the green light. By the time the record came out, the song’s time had passed, and the label barely promoted the album.
But Jimmy Eat World’s small, devoted fanbase held onto Clarity, and the album helped define a new wave of emo bands emerging at the beginning of the millennium. As Static Prevails and Clarity went out of print, Jimmy Eat World broke through to the mainstream with “The Middle,” a massive hit from 2001’s Bleed American. The hit gave the old records new life—especially Clarity, which sounds similar to Bleed American—but also turned off some longtime fans. This 10-city tour of smaller venues seemed designed to reconnect with them as much as to celebrate Clarity.
Mission accomplished. The rapturous audience crammed into every nook of the Metro sang along (particularly with “Your New Aesthetic,” “On A Sunday,” “For Me This Is Heaven,” and “Blister”), cheered, and generally welcomed Jimmy Eat World as conquering heroes. Chicago has always been a good market for the band, even during the lean times in 2000 when the group toured continually to raise money to record Bleed American.
Jimmy Eat World played Clarity flawlessly, from the somber opener “Table For Glasses” to the extended coda of closer “Goodbye Sky Harbor,” where frontman Jim Adkins used a sampler to loop vocal harmonies. Aside from a thunderously loud kick drum in “Table For Glasses”—the Metro’s signature faux pas—the PA mix sounded fantastic, especially during the climactic parts of “Lucky Denver Mint,” “Crush,” and “Blister.” The crowd cheered particularly loud before “Blister” for guitarist Tom Linton, who sings lead in it. Although he performed all lead vocals on the band’s self-titled debut and about half of them on Static Prevails, Linton has stuck to back-ups since Clarity. That may have something to do with the semi-goofy lyrics of "Blister": “How long would it take me / to walk across the United States / all alone / the West Coast has been traumatized / and I think I’m the only one / still alive.” But that’s nothing compared to the “I’m taking my kisses back / whoa-oh / I want my kisses back from you” from “No Sensitivity,” an old song Jimmy Eat World played during the encore.Along with “What Would I Say To You Now,” “No Sensitivity” was one of two deep cuts the band played for the seven-song encore, the rest of which stuck to tracks from Bleed American (“The Middle,” “Sweetness”) and 2004’s Futures (“Work,” “Pain,” “23”). Oddly, the band avoided anything from 2007’s Chase This Light, and "The Middle” felt a little de rigueur. This was a crowd of diehards who knows the old stuff; leave “The Middle” for the big theater shows where people don't know songs like "Call It In The Air."
Regardless, nobody was complaining. When the band closed with “Sweetness,” the crowd sang along with the song’s “whoa-oh-oh” verses—and left the venue, rightly so, reminded of Clarity's greatness.
