| | Jimmy Eat World Futures CD Jimmy Eat World Discography of CDs
This UK tour edition includes two bonus tracks, and a bonus CD of demos.
After firmly establishing itself in the hearts and minds of rock fans through numerous EPs and two albums of angst-fueled power-pop, Jimmy Eat World scored a big hit single with "The Middle," from the excellent BLEED AMERICAN (re-christened JIMMY EAT WORLD in the wake of 9/11). The mainstream had finally caught up with Jimmy Eat World.
FUTURES, the ensemble's first album following its breakthrough, doesn't stray from the formula that has worked so well for the Arizona band. Jim Adkins's vocals are quietly insistent, and at times fiery, conveying reflective, intelligent lyrics that complement intricate melodies. Like its immediate predecessor, FUTURES opens with a politically minded title track ("I hope for better in November"), but, in general, the songs mostly revolve around love and longing. "Work" and "Pain" are filled with heart-on-the-sleeve emotions, and Jimmy Eat World makes these tunes work with undeniable sincerity. With many sharp, catchy songs on display, FUTURES is another outstanding record from Jimmy Eat World.
The massive success of Jimmy Eat World's 2001 Bleed American propelled the band into the mass-culture spotlight, with the hit single "The Middle" seemingly popping up in every third movie released and the group turning in an energized performance on Saturday Night Live. Many, many groups followed in their wake, crafting a similar blend of melodic, anguished punk-pop and leaving Jimmy Eat World in the position of crafting a follow-up that set them apart from their acolytes. Futures gets around this dilemma in two ways. First, with the help of producer Gil Norton, the band polishes its sound until it shines like a slick '70s arena rock record. The guitars are stacked like thick diamonds, the vocals are way out front and buttressed by sweet harmonies in the choruses, the drums sound large, and the mix is loaded with sweetening from acoustic guitars, keyboards, and female vocals. In the process, they sacrificed the immediacy of the previous record, but they gained an epic and weighty feel. Secondly, the lyrics are much darker and more mature, including themes that revolve around politics, drugs, and despair. The piano-and-feedback ballad "Drugs or Me" and the bittersweet love song "Night Drive" are the products of age and experience the band lacked until now. The best song on the record, the very Disintegration-era Cure-sounding "23," sounds like it was recorded by a different group entirely. Some things have remained the same, however. Jim Adkins' vocals are as intense and heart-tugging as ever, and the band still writes hooks that will have you singing along before the song is half over. "Just Tonight," "Futures," and the AC/DC-sampling "Pain" are all trademark Jimmy Eat World punky pop/rockers with anthemic choruses, while "The World You Love" and "Work" display the sweetly melodic side of the band. There are a couple of stumbles (the decision to replace Petra Haden's charming vocals with Liz Phair's, the generic "Nothingwrong"), but they don't detract from the overall power of the record. Futures will most likely not be the sensation that Bleed American was -- it is too dark and inwardly focused for that -- but it shows a progression of sound and emotion that fans of the band should embrace. [The U.K. release came with a second disc made up of demos of all the songs on Futures. Less polished and more immediate, the disc makes an interesting companion to the official release and is well worth seeking out.] ~ Tim Sendra
Limited edition with extra disc featuring demo tracks of the entire album. Interscope/Polydor. 2005.
Audio Mixer: Rich Costey.
Photographer: Kevin Scanlon.Rolling Stone (p.104) - 3 1/2 stars out of 5 - "[T]heir fifth and finest album....With unashamedly sentimental pop-punk tunes that aim for the upper-register quaver in Adkins' voice."
Rolling Stone (p.144) - Included in Rolling Stone's Top 50 Records Of 2004 - "[They] finally show off the pop-wise maturity they have been hiding and refining inside the punk fuzz guitars..."
Spin (p.65) - Ranked #21 in Spin's "40 Best Albums of the Year" - "[T]hese are gorgeously overwrought anthems..."
Entertainment Weekly (p.94) - "[T]hese songs sound supersized..." - Grade: B-
Uncut (p.140) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[T]horoughly pleasant....More Foo Fighters than Fugazi, and all the sparklier for it."
Alternative Press (p.148) - 4 out of 5 - "The end result is a beautiful example of what 'heart-on-sleeve' music should be..."
Kerrang (Magazine) (p.52) - "FUTURES mixes crunchy, rockier numbers with delicate, fragile songs..." Futures Music | List Price | $27.99 (You save $4.70) | | Category | Rock/Pop Albums, Rock CDs, Alternative | | Label | Interscope | | Orig Year | 2004 | | All Time Sales Rank |  516652  | | CD Universe Part number | 6849054 | | Discs | 2 | | Release Date | Apr 04, 2005 | | Studio/Live | Studio | | Mono/Stereo | Stereo | | Producer | Gil Norton; Jimmy Eat World; Mark Trombino | | Engineer | Ross Petersen; Dan Lefler; Dave Schiffman; Jimmy Eat World; Mark Trombino; Rich Costey; Jake Davies | | Personnel | Liz Phair | | Additional Info | Import |
Futures Review
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Purchase Futures CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Zac Brown Foundation CD (2008)
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Rush is no stranger to best-of compilation albums, they've released a slew of them. They are also no stranger to DVDs. To mark their 35th anniversary, they've released Working Men, which is both; it marks their first best-of live compilation exclusively from the DVD sets Rush in Rio (2003), R30 (2005), and Snakes & Arrows Live (2008). There is also an unreleased cut from R30 -- a killer version of One Little Victory. While fans may simply regard this as a record company cash grab, hardcore fans know how closely Rush monitors each release and controls all aspects of their career. On hearing these tracks without benefit of the visuals, it becomes lucidly clear that in the 21st century, Rush plays more like a hungry act looking to prove themselves rather than as seasoned veterans jaded by the entire business. The instrumental interaction between Neal Peart, Alex Lifeson, and Geddy Lee is utterly uncanny, the anticipation and the willingness to add flourishes and to challenge one another in the bridges and solo sections reveal their command of the material and their empathies for one another's playing strengths. One of the more revealing things on a live record such as this one is the sophistication in Lee's vocal delivery now that his singing voice has deepened with age. ...
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Pricipally recorded live at The Roxy, Hollywood, California from December 10-12, 1973; the Auditorium Theater, Chicago, Illinois in 1974; Edinboro State College, Edinboro, Pennsylvania on May 8, 1974.
It's no secret that one of the most powerful weapons in Zappa's arsenal was his sense of humor, which was at its height in live performance. Consequently, there's no better way to get a feel for the full scope of Zappa's music than on the live ROXY & ELSEWHERE. This set finds Frank at his mid-'70s peak, working with Ruth Underwood, Don Preston, George Duke, etc. While all the tunes are technically impeccable (often featuring trademark feats of counter-intuitive derring-do), it's Zappa's humorous interaction with the band and the audience that puts the real spark into this recording.
Delivering lengthy monologues both inbetween and during the songs, Zappa provides light-hearted contrast to the mulit-textured, typically sophisticated arrangements. For every "Son of Orange County" ...
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| | Lonesome, On'Ry And Mean: A Tribute To Waylon Jennings. CD (2003)
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Tribute albums, sadly, are the way many listeners are introduced to veteran artists, but 2003's Lonesome, On'ry and Mean: A Tribute to Waylon Jennings -- released roughly a year after Jennings' death -- is botched as an introduction and as a tribute or even just as a good listen. Pretty much everything that could go wrong with a tribute does, with songs sinking even if they're performed by Waylon colleagues (Kris Kristofferson on "I Do Believe") or designed as replicas (Junior Brown's "Nashville Rebel") or even sung by their songwriters (Jack Clement's "Let's All Help the Cowboys [Sing the Blues]"). And those are the good moments. Sure, there's no shortage of love for Waylon here, but the interpretations are by and large leaden -- John Doe's "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line" takes the swing out of the guitar riff; Robert Earl Keen's "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" is reinterpreted so there's no Hank there at all -- and, occasionally, flat-out embarrassing, like Henry Rollins' infuriating lead-footed take on the title track. The problem is, Waylon was such a towering presence, giving everything he sang a stamp of authority, that having 13 of the 14 singers treat him with kid gloves or act too indebted to his legacy only brings out his own strength while sadly sapping the power out of the songs themselves. The exception that proves the rule? Carlene Carter's great version of "I've Always Been Crazy." Sure, the song may be disarmingly close to her battles with substance abuse and legal problems, but that may also be why she digs in and finds the heart of the song, giving the only performance that mirrors what Waylon did when he sang. And that's too bad, because Waylon, as one of the greats of both country music and American popular music in the 20th century, deserves better from a tribute. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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Eick's tone on the trumpet is almost signature. It's warm but explores high registers quite comfortably without sounding thin. His compositions explore the relative boundary-blurring terrains between experimentalist notions, the purer melodies found in the folk musics of his region, and the exploration of various timbral extensions, As a leader he continually engages time and space explorations as the device of depth communication in skeletal but restrained frameworks. One of his lyric influences is certainly his countryman Garbarek. Eick takes a tune like the opening title number and pursues all of its melodic possibilities on his horn and a guitar as his ensemble picks up cues and travels down the same path, albeit at a different pace. On "Cologne Blues," he allows the feeling of both the blues and more elegiac traditional forms to dictate his solo path, even as Carstensen paints the backdrop with atmospheres more akin to arid terrains than these lush moody ones. On "Stavanger," mutant broken beat grooves and slightly angular ideas from Balke pose questions in forms, such as funky pastoral notions where lyric, and more challenging tonal ones encounter shifting rhythmic passages. Yet, as is always the case with Eick, the melodic theme returns in the same way that time is cyclical. Musical architectures and interrogative concepts push at one another inside the spaces he leaves, but they are bridged by his utterly magnificent lyricism.
Eick is an extremely canny player as well as a composer. He can smatter notes with the best of them, but he resists that temptation at every turn on The Door. Instead, he prefers to create quiet, groove-like statements that subtly encourage -- by way of seduction -- the listener's attention, which opens from curiosity to passive acceptance to active participation in each track. This is an excellent introduction to a player who has plenty to say and many ways of saying it. The Door is a beautifully mysterious and deeply satisfying entry in the ECM canon and a very auspicious debut. ~ Thom Jurek
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