To qualify for approval on the American emo punk scene, you had to be gnarly, melodically ‘challenging’ and denounce the very concept of a hit forever. So when Arizona’s Jimmy Eat World broke for the Billboard border with their eponymous album in 2002, the ‘sell-out’ brickbats inevitably flew.
Now their fourth album, stuffed with Fountains Of Wayne-but-shoutier chug-poppers like “Pain”, arrives as a kind of Joshua Tree for the heavily pierced and mildly upset. And thoroughly pleasant it is, too: more Foo Fighters than Fugazi, and all the sparklier for it.
MARK BEAUMONT
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