“The open road is still miles away. Ain’t nothing serious. We still have our fun. Oh, we had it once.” These words, from the second verse of Jimmy Eat World’s perpetually underrated song, “The World You Love,” sum up so much of why I have fallen head-over-heels in love with this band over the past five years of my life. Jimmy Eat World’s music is best represented by the open road late night drives that “The World You Love” calls to mind. The freedom to explore the best of what the world has to offer.
My life is currently in a state of transition. One change, in particular, looms larger than the others. One of my closest friends, and one of the catalysts for thrusting me headfirst into Jimmy Eat World super fandom, is moving 600 miles away at the end of the month. Someday, maybe soon, I will end up relocating as well. So that line, so symbolic of the open road optimism for the future, is also simultaneously so wistful about the places we’re leaving behind, and the fun we’re putting in the rear-view mirror.
It’s this tightrope act between pensive, longing reflection on the past and relentless optimism for the future that I pondered as I drove north on I-287 through the rain, with no clear destination in mind, and the dashboard clock winding towards midnight. And sound-tracking that late-night drive was Integrity Blues, the breathtaking ninth studio album from Jimmy Eat World.
It’s a first listen I will never forget to an album which is even more remarkable than the band’s incredible track record would have predicted. As the angelic opening harmonies of lead track “You With Me” kicked in, and the rumbling, propulsive drum beat enveloped me, it was hard not to feel like this was an album specifically made for that precise moment in space and time.
While that first listen imbued the record with immediate emotional resonance, it was subsequent listens where the depth and scope of the songwriting achievement of Integrity Blues struck me. As vocalist Jim Adkins stated in his post introducing the album, thematically Integrity Blues is a record about self-improvement and progression. It is about “accept(ing) life on the terms of life, and becoming willing to accept the best any of us have is to be in a state of progress.” Lead single “Sure and Certain” epitomizes this struggle to work towards self-improvement: “The clever ways I try to change, happen and pass, leaving me the same.”
The back-to-back mid-tempo numbers “It Matters” and “Pretty Grids” provide much of the album’s backbone of longing and heartache. The former is a song about the unspoken hurt of a fleeting, failing relationship. While the protagonist imagines, “talks that last all night,” about the state of their relationship, instead he is met with hesitance, and most crushingly, silent body language which says more than a conversation ever could: “Nothing new to see, saying what you mean, when you pull away.” These feelings of hurt and loss seem to be exponentially increased if one pins their moral failures on others.
The most daring of the songs on the album, though, is the awe-inspiring “Pass The Baby.” Lyrically, the song is a lot to unpack and I imagine there will be a great deal of conversation about lyrical interpretations on the title phrase. I have come to view it as something of a commentary on the music industry and its obsession with fetishizing young, typically female, bodies, but that is simply one interpretation of a phrase which is left deliberately vague. More importantly, though, musically “Pass The Baby” is a foundational splitting between two vastly different halves of the record.
The first half of the song represents the first half of the record, a brooding, foreboding warning siren. The second half explodes in a fireball of energy, as if all that pent up frustration and tension has finally been released. I am hesitant to spoil it too much because when the switchover happens it is awe-inspiring, but I will say that if you saw the band’s teaser video on their website you will be in for a treat when “Pass The Baby” comes alive.
And what is left in its wake is a tour de force of the best Jimmy Eat World has to offer. Adkins gives what I would consider his greatest vocal performance of his career on the back half of Integrity Blues, vacillating between raucous hard-charging alt-rock numbers “Through” and “Get Right” and delicate, vulnerable performances like “The End is Beautiful” and the title track, “Integrity Blues.” The latter song will perhaps garner the most mixed reaction, since it is much more vibey and relaxed than the songs that surround it, but I believe it’s the lyrical lynchpin for the record.
The repeated refrain “It’s all what you do when no one is there, it’s all what you do when no one cares,” represents the ethos behind the back half of the record. While the front half was warning of the dangers of failing to consider yourself a work-in-progress, the back half is about moving forward once you have finally taken that leap towards self-improvement.
While “Integrity Blues” maybe be the most lyrically resonant, “You Are Free” is one of the greatest songs Jimmy Eat World has ever written. It’s a song that could have appeared on any of their records since Bleed American, yet it is expertly crafted to the point where it feels like the kind of song they’ve been working towards writing for fifteen years. The chorus has been stuck in my head for a month straight, with no end in sight.
Producer Justin Meldal-Johnson continues to add to his impressive resume, a catalog that includes such impeccably produced records as Paramore’s self-titled album, Tegan and Sara’s Heartthrob, and M83’s Hurry Up, I’m Dreaming. Jimmy Eat World has done exceptionally glossy record production in the past, as both Chase This Light and Invented have a great deal of studio sheen, but not since Futures have they married this polished production with a cinematic feel and sort of atmospheric wide-scope depth that Meldal-Johnson’s production work lends to Integrity Blues.
No discussion of the album would be complete without discussing “Pol Roger,” though. Jimmy Eat World has a history of delivering rousing, anthemic closers, with “23,” “Dizzy,” and “Goodbye Sky Harbor” all considered fan favorites. Adkins’s imagery on “Pol Roger” is second to none, however, and this second verse of the song is a stunning snapshot of domestic bliss: “I’d say get on and close the bedpost curtain. Pretend the ground is fire. I know that’d make you smile.” “Pol Roger” is Jimmy Eat World’s version of the instantly iconic “Bittersweet Symphony.” Musically, it bears a slight passing resemblance to The Verve’s classic, but it’s the marrying of uplifting musical passages with somber, introspective moments, which can create lyrical moments like Adkins asking, “Are you alone like me? Alone, but not lonely.” This apparent paradox strikes at the heart of the battling forces within the best Jimmy Eat World songs.
It’s that balance, as Adkins once put it on “Futures”, “between living decent, and the cold and real,” that summarizes Jimmy Eat World’s entire career, and it’s this delicate balance which formulates the structure at the very root of Integrity Blues. It’s the striving for someone, a significant other, a group of friends, or perhaps a parental figure, that will push you to become better than you are. Integrity Blues is about knowing you’re bound to fail once or twice, but vowing to pick yourself up off the mat, and become better for it. I don’t know what the future holds. I know there will be successes and I’m even more certain there will be failures, but I know that Jimmy Eat World will be there, providing the soundtrack to those night drives every step of the way.