Jimmy Eat World kicked off their ‘Bleed American’ 25th anniversary tour last night (June 9) at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
- READ MORE: Jimmy Eat World talk celebrating 25 years of ‘Bleed American’: “We were kids living in the moment”
The Arizona emo icons have a stacked summer of celebrations in honour of their huge 2001 LP, taking in a run of outdoor UK shows with a massive gig at London’s Gunnersbury Park, alongside newly-announced North American gigs, and their return to the legendary Vans Warped Tour.
They kicked off their opening show at the iconic venue, playing their 2001 breakthrough album in full along with cuts from 1999’s ‘Clarity’ and 2004’s ‘Futures’ and a host of B-sides.
They started the show with four tracks from the 1999 LP before the band proceeded to roll out their 2001 album in full.
‘Disintegration’ from their 2005 EP ‘Stay On My Side Tonight’ also got an airing for the first time since 2014 during the encore before they gave ‘(Splash) Turn Twist’ from 2004 EP ‘Firestarter’ its live debut. You can view footage below.
‘Bleed American’ saw the band turn from struggling underground pioneers into a mainstream global success. Their now classic third album ‘Clarity’ from 1999 would go on to achieve cult status as one of the best emo records of all time, but it was then seen as a commercial failure and saw them dropped by their label, Capitol.
“I have no idea why it’s been able to do that,” Adkins recently told NME of that album’s enduring legacy. “Questions like that are the last thing in the universe on your mind when you’re creating something, or even now. We just had this batch of ideas that we were excited about and decided to record them.”
When asked if he felt like ‘Bleed American’ was going to be their ‘make or break’ moment, he added: “I can see how from an outside perspective – especially these days – if you were looking at our story and reading that we were dropped by our record label and went on to finance our own album and it went on to be successful that it might look that way, ‘Hey guys, this is it, we’re putting it all on black!’.
“It wasn’t like that at all from our perspective. The business and industry side of things was all just noise in the background.”
Speaking about the record’s enduring legacy, he added: “It went through its ups and downs in a public way in the first five years. ‘The Middle’ was very successful in a commercial way where you didn’t have to seek it out because it was on the radio. ‘Sweetness’ too.
“The people that are finding the album now, or in the last 10 years, means its something they’ve sought out or have been able to absorb in a way that allows it to be theirs, on a personal level. Now you can really feel what it means to you as a listener. That’s powerful.”
As for putting the setlist for the tour, Adkins said: “We’re going back and forth on the set, whether we mix up the whole album into a live setlist. When you’ve got 10 albums of material, maybe you wouldn’t normally play those kinds of songs in that order. There’s a different arc to sequencing an album compared to a gig.
“For this, we’ll probably just play the album as a piece. We’ve been thinking about other material and we’re not just going to do that. I’m hoping to present a kind of arc of where we were before and a little bit after ‘Bleed American’, maybe some stuff we haven’t as much or ever. It’s about presenting a story and a little bit into the journal entry that was ‘Bleed American’ for our band.”
Jimmy Eat World played:
‘Clarity’
‘Believe in What You Want’
‘Your New Aesthetic’
‘Lucky Denver Mint’
‘Bleed American’
‘A Praise Chorus’
‘The Middle’
‘Your House’
‘Sweetness’
‘Hear You Me’
‘If You Don’t, Don’t’
‘Get It Faster’
‘Cautioners’
‘The Authority Song’
‘My Sundown’
‘Disintegration’
‘Pain’
‘For Me This Is Heaven’
‘(Splash) Turn Twist’
’23’
