There has to be a plaque somewhere in Jimmy Eat World’s recording studio reading “With great power comes great responsibility.” A fitting mantra for more than Peter Parker’s web-slinging morality wars, when you’re one of the most dependable and profoundly influential rock bands on the planet, keeping your ears to the ground and never abandoning your legend is a heck of a responsibility. Harnessing their impeccable creative powers once again, Invented is a melting pot of Jimmy Eat World’s notoriously engaging rock music that showcases ample use of dedication, skill and intelligence over 50 minutes that will burn into your brain (with delight). Fight them off, they come back stronger. You can try to restrain the strength of Jim Adkins’ flawless vocals or even attempt to push the most talented rhythm section in alternative rock out of your way, but it’s no use. Jimmy Eat World has this down to a science and you would be hard-pressed to find this all much ado about nothing.

Sometimes on those cold late nights when the air coming from my body feels as if my soul is struggling to unleash itself from its shackles, I think of the words sung by Jimmy Eat World front man Jim Adkins on “Night Drive”: “You pierce my heart like a willing arm, your ticking makes my blood move.” Lines such as this, that sting immediately due to their poignancy and stark honesty fill the entire landscape that Jimmy Eat World’s landmark 2004 album Futures builds for itself and the listener.

It’s a tough world out there for pop bands. In order to make the best of their lot, and appeal to the masses, they usually have to be billed as “guilty pleasures” or are forced to parade around under some genre hybridization for the sole sake of avoiding the dirty p-word. Yet somehow, through it all, Jimmy Eat World has managed to navigate through all of this fog and mudslinging to the point where they have transcended traditional criticisms. Perhaps it is because they are one of the few multi-platinum groups to still do club tours, or maybe just because they have so consistently upheld their own high standard for the past decade and a half. Either way, the band has attained a position of prominence in modern music and it is from this perch that they release their sixth studio album, Chase This Light.