Jimmy Eat World - Chase This Light

The newest offering from Jimmy Eat World, entitled Chase This Light, contains as many questions as it does answers. For just over a decade now, fearless alt-rock bandleader Jim Adkins has crafted a sound that is unique, crisp and ultimately over produced as it boasts ultra-tight stops and starts, power pop guitar riffs and songs that have staying power within both the indie and mainstream music scenes. How does old Jimmy do it?

Chase This Light is more of the same from Jimmy Eat World but is still, and almost impossibly, taken up another notch. The lead off track and radio hit “Big Casino” has already jammed so many major radio frequencies with its convalescent pop sound that it’s almost become a certainty that you’ll hear it on a 10 minute drive (if you do, in fact, drive with the radio on). “Big Casino” showcases driving electric guitar, throttling drums and Adkins’ trademark jittery, passionate vocal chords. Though the words of the song have been debated through several zines as a first person story about Adkins, it is more of an informed opinion that the song is actually a fictitious story about an average Joe from Jersey who dreams of striking it rich:

I’ll accept with poise with grace
When they draw my name from the lottery
And they’ll say “all the salt in the world couldn’t melt that ice”
I’m the one who gets away
I’m a New Jersey success story
And they’ll say “Lord give me the chance to shake that hand”

The song, though, seems to be more layered than what a first glimpse would indicate. Oddly enough, Go Big Casino has been the title of a somewhat secretive musical side project of Adkins for years. Though there are some other decent songs on the album (“Let It Happen”, “Gotta Be Somebody’s Blues”, “Carry You”), the standouts and possibly thematic emblems of the album lie in “Big Casino” and the title track, which speaks of the inevitable clock of life over a bed of soothing guitar-scapes (“Tonight, chase this light with me…/my life is yours/in your gifted hands”).

It could be clearly stated that Jim and the boys are no longer just rock icons screaming about injustice - they are thinking about and dwelling upon the uncertainty of life. “Big Casino” seems to be less of a song and more of a theme for the album and perhaps the song title, itself, refers to the wavering faith our society places within the power of money. Perhaps the theme of the song was Jim’s original idea in the creation of his musical side project - perhaps it’s totally off the mark.

But what stands out about Chase This Light in a time where creative music is at its distributional peak? What will make both fans and non-fans of Jimmy Eat World buy this album? One word comes to mind; Integrity. Jim Adkins has stayed true to his form and style of songwriting, (though lessening a little on the experimental side since early JEW tracks like the nine-minute epic “Sky Harbor”) sticking more to the straight-ahead values of displaying a message through a highly accessible medium.

In a sense, it could be argued that Chase This Light is representative of Adkins and the band - they have never stopped chasing the light that started all of them down the road of music. On the album back cover artwork, the light is displayed in the form of a lit match which may indicate, on an even deeper level, that Adkins and crew know just how powerful that light really is…and just how quickly it can disappear.