Review Summary: "Your enemy is you. And unfortunately you know every button to push, every hidden fear and every secret regret. You speak to yourself in your own voice." – Jim Adkins
From the open letter which introduced this album and its mission statement to the world (when did that become the thing for musicians to do?), it would be easy to think
Integrity Blues is reaching for much grander, loftier ideas than Jimmy Eat World have reached for in the past. It's a record about growing old and moving on, travelling and exploring, finding contentment outside of achievements and gold stars. Yet in some ways it's also Jimmy Eat World's most personal effort. Of course, the appeal of Jim Adkins has always been the way he magnifies the mundane while personalising the universal, sometimes in the same line ("the dial isn’t broken, that's the way it works" has always been a favourite), but on
Integrity Blues it's not only in the lyrics but in the presentation.
Straight from "You With Me"'s gorgeous wordless intro it's clear that Jimmy Eat World are finally comfortable taking their time to get the songs where they want to go, a huge swing of the pendulum from the try-hard rawness of
Damage. "Through" actually sounds like that album done justice, its vicious guitar shred and bitter lyrics recalling
Damage's best moments without the downfall of sounding like it's been recorded through tin-cans-and-strings. "Integrity Blues", the second biggest surprise on an album with a considerable set, comes off as the earthier, organic cousin of
Chase This Light b-side "Beautiful Is". With an isolated, desolate vocal from Adkins that may be one of the best of his career and a simple sequence of strings, the song captures more than ever the band's natural songwriting talent, and without an appearance from 3/4ths of its members. There's no way I can fail to mention "Pass the Baby", the mid-album monster that sounds like Rage Against the Machine jumped 20 years into their future to guest on a Jimmy Eat World song. If there is any touchstone for the masterpiece it is
Chase This Light's eerie "Gotta Be Somebody's Blues", but with the anxiety and simmering rage cranked up to 11.
Yet the record's greatest moment comes at its most unassuming and carefree, the utterly breathtaking "The End is Beautiful". With the absolute simplest of melodies the song puts a full stop on seemingly every heartbreak Jim has written about; with a deep sigh the band lets go of all the pain from "For Me This is Heaven", "Cautioners", "Work" and countless others. It reminds us why we fell so impossibly in love with a band like Jimmy Eat World in the first place; the way the songs and lyrics seem to be what's already written in your soul, in a relationship so intimate it goes far beyond band-and-listener or even friend-and-friend. Jim Adkins
is all of his listeners, all their creeping anxieties and comforting places and deepest desires. He knows all these things because he knows himself, from a career of plumbing his own depths for something to write about. And after years of defining himself by his relationship with others, after living through heartbreak and addiction and loss, Adkins has arrived at a place where he can face up to the toughest enemy of all – himself – and pushes through. What can be waiting on the other side, after loneliness and fear have been overcome, but some honest-to-god integrity?
