Jimmy Eat World’Chase this Light’50 DecibelsSounds like: Motion City Soundtrack, Texas is the Reason

Puns come to mind when trying to describe Jimmy Eat World’s new record, ‘Chase This Light.’

‘Writers of ‘The Middle’ struggle with middle-age’ floats to the surface before being crumpled up and tossed aside into the wastebasket of bad writing – but let’s keep it simple.

Yes, because that’s the sort of effort the band has chosen to turn in on this, their sixth LP: a minimal set of 11 songs all generally drawn from the same template and all clocking in at less than five minutes.

So here’s the easiest way to summarize: ‘Chase This Light’ is mediocre. It’s bland. It’s disappointing.

Record by record, the Mesa, Ariz., band has drifted farther from its emo roots that anchored the 1998 masterpiece ‘Clarity.’

The days when hard-chargers such as ‘Blister’ and ‘Crush’ would pound the listeners’ terrain, laid bare by the gorgeous elegies and keyboard-laden bridges of ‘Just Watch the Fireworks’ and ‘12.23.95’ are gone.

Even on the two more straightforward albums that followed, 2001’s self-titled record and 2004’s ‘Futures,’ the hooks and plaintive vocals of lead singer Jim Adkins, now 31, were still able to carry listeners through.

But on ‘Chase This Light,’ it’s as though Adkins and Co. sleepwalked through the record, like a lazy 10-year vet pitcher slopping breaking balls over the plate, just trying to survive. Songs like ‘Firefight’ and ‘Let it Happen’ practically scream, ‘Forget the verses, forget the instrumentation, just wait for the choruses.’

It’s a middle aged album: heavy on gloss with famed Nirvana producer Butch Vig behind the boards, but skimpy on risk taking. It’s polished, but choppy: The songs struggle to flow together. And too often, it’s just cookie-cutter modern rock, the kind usually found on a Goo Goo Dolls CD.

And sometimes it’s worse.

‘Here it Goes,’ with it’s pristinely timed handclaps and piped-in background vocals, sounds like something written by faux punk-pop songwriting team The Matrix and swept off the cutting room floor from the latest Ashley Parker Angel CD, slipped onto ‘Chase This Light’ by accident.

Highlights pop up in spots: ‘Carry You’ is brilliant and the welding of The Edge-esque guitar riffs pour on the drama in album closer ‘Dizzy.’ But it’s not enough.

It’s difficult to see Jimmy Eat World like this, especially for a band that soared to such great heights in the past.

The band has reached a point where it’s free to follow its creative impulses. Sadly for fans, this is where they’ve chosen to go.

Published on October 15, 2007 at 12:00 pm