Review: Jimmy Eat World jams at The Observatory

Who: Jimmy Eat World, Roar

Where: Observatory OC, Santa Ana, California

When: January 12, 2016

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Jimmy Eat World is an iconic band with eight albums across their career and their still going strong. On Thursday they played a sold out show at the Observatory in Santa Ana, California with the band Roar as the opener.

In October they released Integrity Blues, which was produced by my favorite music producer (Justin Meldal-Johnsen). Singer Jim Adkins has said that the album is about being able to live as a person in progress. If you haven’t had the chance to listen yet, I suggest you do because it’s a very good album.

The show was great, they played a monster set filled with 26 songs, with at least one song from every album except Static Prevails. They played all the classic tunes everyone knows and sings along to. The band came on and simply said, “Hi, thanks for being here,” and then straight into the music.

The coolest moment for me was at the end during “Sweetness”. I really love hearing everyone sing together at shows. It’s just the coolest moment hearing everyone come together to sing their hearts out along with the band. I was singing so loud that my voice was hurting the next day. That’s a good sign that the concert went well.

Another memorable moment was when they played this song “Pass the Baby” from their new album. It was a song unlike any other Jimmy Eat World song I had heard before. It starts out with a bass line and an electronic drum beat and Adkins singing softly. Having pretty much only heard Jimmy Eat World playing songs with guitar lines and big chorus parts, this song was a cool change. Eventually the song does have that classic Jimmy guitar line, but the first part of the song is just different.

The show atmosphere itself was cool; I think there were a lot of super fans at this show because the people around me were singing every word of every song. The band had mock street lights set up on stage with them and I thought that was a really cool part of their set.

The last couple of songs were the two classics that everyone knows, as well as the lead single “Sure and Certain” from Integrity Blues. I think after this show the way I would describe Jimmy Eat World is classy. They’re just really good at what they do and they have the most awesome music to back them up.

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