Jimmy Eat World - Futures CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

All over Futures they sing about teen heartbreak, cherry lipstick, hotel bars, drugs and turning twenty-three. They also sing about making out in cars.Jimmy Eat World have beefed up the sound of their 2001 breakthrough hit, Bleed American, which was hastily retitled Jimmy Eat World after 9/11. They've still got the high-energy guitars and the misery-laden vocals. But the songs are longer and trickier, building from mellow acoustic passages to the slam-dunk choruses of "Pain," "Just Tonight . . . " and "The World You Love." The band's richer sound can be attributed to new producer Gil Norton, an architect of the loud-quiet-loud template with the Pixies (Doolittle), Foo Fighters (The Colour and the Shape) and Dashboard Confessional (A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar). But it also sounds like they've been listening to their old Echo and the Bunnymen records.

Jimmy Eat World stick to their favorite topic here: the feelings of misfit kids trying to make a connection while they plot their escape from the lonesome towns where they're stuck. Adkins never sounds like a con man, which matters a lot in angst-ridden tunes such as "Pain." His voice cracks over hook lines such as "I taste you all over my teeth" ("Just Tonight . . . ") or "Keep me somewhere the drugs don't go" ("Drugs or Me"). The excellent "Work" sounds just like Liz Phair's "Divorce Song," so it's cool that Phair appears on background vocals, even if you can't really hear her through the wall of guitars. "Polaris" has frosty guitar ache that sounds like a cross between Pavement's "Frontwards" and Def Leppard's "Hysteria," which is definitely a compliment.

"Night Drive" is the big climactic power ballad, and what can you say: Did the world really need another song about lost innocence in a leased Hyundai? Yes, apparently. Adkins even brought along some blankets in the back seat -- what a smoothie! "Night Drive" has some teeth-gnashingly bad lines ("Come alive on the driver's side" -- you gotta be kidding), but the falsetto hook and acoustic riff make it a pretty great song anyway. If it seems incongruous that these guys sing about dashboard-lighting it up while they're pushing thirty in real life, it's even weirder that the two catchiest rockers on Futures, "Just Tonight

Heavy-hitting precision and longing go hand in hand on Jimmy Eat World's 2004 release. Although still rooted in punk-rock angularity, the guitars ring out with a heavier punch. Tracks like "Just Tonight" help push the band further into the realms of commercial acceptability without losing any sense of integrity.