Jimmy Eat World is close to 30 of the newly independent track

Two years after being forced out of the way amid an early pandemic lockdown, Arizona-based stand-up actor Jimmy Eats World returned to the stage last summer in Lollapalooza. Tour dates with Dashboard Confessional as well as their own main tour came earlier this year and the group is back in Chicago this summer as part of Riot Fest, where they put on a benign show Saturday night in the Chicago metro prior to a Sunday afternoon festival performance.

“It was great. It was great to be back. It feels like people are kind of excited about the live music,” said Zach Lind, drummer Jimmy Eat World, backstage before the group’s festival set.

After releasing their last studio album SurvivalJimmy Eat World is back in their indie ranks, and their rocking new song “Something Loud” marks the first independent release of their career.

Singer and guitarist Jim Adkins said there was “not much difference” about the way the group treats their work as an independent business today compared to their time on the label. “We learned early in our time as a band that the less reliance on an outside entity, the better it was to become a band. Over the years, we’ve kind of learned what’s good for us to delegate and what would be a better product if we stayed closely involved with it. So And, in our view, with the ways in which the labels have been slowly picking up over the past 10 years while trying to turn a quarterly profit… there really isn’t much difference in not having a label in terms of where the labels have been.”

With the emergence of online streaming services like Spotify and the current major label launch strategies focusing more and more on areas like TikTok, a powerful single is more important than ever. For now, Jimmy Eat World will focus its efforts on singles, as part of a new independent release strategy that reflects changing trends.

“We’re kind of trying something different — trying to interview people where they are about how they consume music. And we’ll just see what happens,” Adkins said. “I think we’ll release another song in October. There’s still a few more things we’ve put together about “Something Loud” before that. So we will constantly be asking less but more often.”

After forming in 1993, the group broke into the mainstream after the release of their fourth studio album American bleeding In 2001, he set a record platinum status and sales of nearly two million copies in the United States thanks to the strength of singles such as “The Middle”, “A Praise Chorus” and “Sweetness”.

release follow them Futures It went gold and the group has so far released ten studio albums, weathering the collapse of the major label system that came into play once their profile started to skyrocket.

Unlike many bands around them in the ’90s, Jimmy Eat World was never forced to focus entirely on nostalgia, constantly releasing powerful and thoughtful new music.

Last week at Riot Fest, the group pulled from across their catalog during an hour-long show in front of a large crowd, starting with a number of hit songs in “Futures,” “Pain” and “Bleed American” before moving on to deeper cuts like “Big Casino,” Crowd surfers flocked to the catwalk as the group concluded with “Sweetness” and “The Middle.”

Staring at their 30th year together next year, Jimmy Eatworld is still in a great spot as they move forward on a newly independent road.

“We’re not on the casino circuit yet, guys. We’re still coming up with new things,” Adkins joked.

“It’s a bit hard to think of 30, because it’s such a huge number. But it’s something we think about quite a bit. I think we want to get to know it but don’t touch it too much,” Lind added.

“As Zack said, we want to get to know him because he’s kind of special — not many people get to that point. And I think fans would appreciate something special for us to give them who’ve been around for 30 years in some cases,” said Adkins. “You just have to find the balance between how much you celebrate versus how much you rely on that? Because we don’t want to rely on that.”