Let’s freeze the time to the end of 2001, where Jimmy Eat World (JEW)’s Bleed American is one of the cures for my disappointment from weezer’s green album. It has it rawness of a geek-rock-esque music that I missed from the green album, which is a sappy album for me. It was even before I found what emo is, where some critics have placed them to fit into that category.
Long story short, here I am fast forwarding the time where I didn’t realized that Jimmy Eat World have produced three albums after Bleed American. Some of the songs I have listened somewhere before, but didn’t realize it was theirs.
It was the third of November where I finally got the chance to see them perform live. Minus the Bear was the opening act for that night’s show and the rest of JEW’s European Invented Tour. The Seattle based band played perfectly for the opener. They played slightly different from their album in terms of the sound quality. Probably it was because they don’t want to steal JEW’s spotlight as the main act that night. But I’m pretty sure that they will have a much better output if they were provided with the same sound quality with JEW that night.
Minus the Bear played for almost an hour before the band and their stage crew cleaned up the stage to make way for JEW. The stage was clear in no time, and the stage was not much decorated. Only a few light stands and a black backdrop with a few diamond shaped patch like the so-called-geek’s-sweater-patch.
JEW opened the show with the song Bleed American, which was taken from the album with the same title, than was changed to a self titled due to the 9/11 attack. The audience, which was not really impressed when Minus the Bear played, jumped off and sang along with the music. I don’t know whether they’re not familiar with Minus the Bear’s song or they’re just a bunch of typical Dutch kids who just stood there during the concert. These kids most likely to dance only if they’re drunk, or it was a techno-rave music played on stage.
“Your New Aesthetic” from the album “Clarity” played as the second song. The band still wants to pump up the tempo by playing “A Praise Chorus”, and then played their first single from their new album, “My Best Theory”. Besides the four main member of JEW, there was also a girl who stands calmly behind the keyboard. It was Courtney Marie Andrews who filled the roles as backup vocal in the new album “Invented”. In the album, she sang 5 songs. That night, she’s in charge to replace her voice for Liz Phair’s, Rachel Haden’s and Amy Ross’, who contributed as backing vocals in some of JEW’s album.
The tempo slowed down on the 6th song, “For Me This is Heaven”, which was one of the emotional songs from “Clarity”. “Futures” then broke up the mellowing with the lyric “say hello to good times, trade up for the fast ride...” Other new songs from “Invented”, such as “Action Needs an Audience”, “Coffee and Cigarettes”, “Movielike” and “Evidence” were played in-between the 18 songs before the encore. “Goodbye Sky Harbour” was chosen before the encore, where Jim Adkins plays freely with the microphone and synthesizer, without his guitar for the last five minutes of the song (on the album it was 16 minutes long!) and disappear behind the stage.
It doesn’t take more than 10 minutes before the band showed up for the encore. They played “23”, “Get it Faster”, “The Middle”, and finally “Sweetness” to close the show. Automatically the crowd went crazy. One guy got pushed off the stage by one of the crew for trying to crowd surf. One girl got injured for the incident.
Overall, the show is placed in one of my best concert experience. Jim Adkins’ vocal is truly amazing. He was able to keep his voice stable for pitching the high notes, with such an up-tempo music. The band connected to the audience by communicating between songs sometimes, and made a good music setlist for us to singalong. Although, there was no different if you see the band perform live and hear them on their records: not much improvisation. But the only difference is that you get the experience to sing their songs aloud with hundreds of JEW fans!
Jimmy Eat World Setlist (Melkweg, Amsterdam 3 November 2011)
1. Bleed American
2. Your New Aesthetic
3. A Praise Chorus
4. My Best Theory
5. Let it Happen
6. For Me This is Heaven
7. Futures
8. Big Casino
9. Action Needs an Audience
10. Pain
11. Dizzy
12. Coffee and Cigarettes
13. Movielike
14. Hear You Me
15. Evidence
16. Work
17. Blister
18. Goodbye Sky Harbor
--encore--
19. 23
20. Get it Faster
21. The Middle
22. Sweetness
ouw..ouw..life's good..
ReplyDeletehahaha
gua juga mau nonton The Raveonettes malem ini..
*kompetitif random anaknya :))