On the cusp of the release of their latest and most polished offering to-date, Jimmy Eat World guitarist Tom Linton tells how late night television’s David Letterman still gives him the willies.
On the cusp of the release of their latest and most polished offering to-date, Jimmy Eat World guitarist Tom Linton tells how late night television’s David Letterman still gives him the willies. I’m moderately awed and intrigued, but not surprised – that dude is way creepy.
Okay, so maybe it has more to do with the fact that the Jimmy Eat World axeman is not the kind of guy who thrives on attention, but you can see how it might be a symbolic awkwardness. After all, having first wound up on the late night TV rounds nearly ten years ago on the back of breakthrough long-player Bleed American, the rise and rise of the Arizonian quartet can be mapped alongside each return to the CBS studios, even if the lads still “freak out” on occasion.
Alongside every handshake from the famous host the boys have consolidated another list of accomplishments in a career that now spans seven full-length studio albums, countless high-charting singles and the better part of two decades on the road. Indeed, in spite of the band’s discomfort, the enormous mainstream success of their particularly infectious blend of pop-drenched emo has etched the boys a place in American rock history.
But it’s been Jimmy Eat World’s ability to avoid the stigmatisation of commercial success that makes them so unique. Having answered the call for last-minute replacements on this year’s Soundwave Festival, they soaked up one of the best atmospheres of the night, playing a truly memorable set to a crowd that made some of the headliners’ look like first-class disappointments.
“We thought there would just be a lot of My Chemical Romance fans that were still there and that they’d be kind of pissed off,” he laughs, with a tone that suggests he could have played to such a crowd without batting an eyelid. “But it was kind of nice to get out of the studio for a little bit and it helped us clear our heads – we’d been stuck in there so long.”
In any case, it seems that particular little excursion was just the ticket. Invented, the forthcoming record from the band is set to blow the socks off fans still reeling from the overproduction of 2007’s Chase This Light. Though the commercial success of that record stacks up favourably against their previous releases, this time around, tells Linton, the album served more as a marker of difference than a template for success.
“There is definitely some pressure that we feel,” he says. “We want the record to do well and we, as a band, try to do everything that we can to get people into it.
“There was one conversation we had about keeping this record more stripped down than Chase This Light – on some of the songs we kind of got carried away with the production and we didn’t want to have that happen again.”
Having largely self-produced that record, the band decided to get back to an established relationship in long-time friend Mark Trombino and, after catching up with the in-demand Californian whiletouring the 10th anniversary of major label debut Clarity, the boys packaged up a new batch of songs and sent them through in ones and zeros.
“It was done really weird, just emailing the files back and forward between us, with changes to the song structures and so on,” says Linton – the words of a man schooled in the old. “He’s just brutally honest and like a fifth member of the band.”
Invented is out now through Interscope/Universal. Check out their website, jimmyeatworld.com, for more information about the band.
