Jimmy Eats World and Manchester Orchestra at the Greek: Alt-emo-pop-rock masters Jimmy Eat World commercially peaked with the 2001 album Bleed American, and super-catchy singles such as “The Middle and “Sweetness. But the albums that came before and after have been brilliant if less instant, right up to 2019’s Surviving. A bill with Atlanta alt heroes Manchester Orchestra is a superb idea.

We spoke to Jimmy Eat World in December, just prior to their Almost Acoustic Christmas appearance.   Frontman Jim Adkins told us that, "We’re always working on material. I don’t know exactly what form it will look like when we choose to release that material. I don’t know. We’ve been trying to meet people where they’re at with what we think is the way people consume music these days, and by and large that’s by track instead of album. So I guess our current operating mode is to see how that goes. But that’s not going to be forever. Personally, there’s a reward about putting together a body of work that includes – you can get through it in a setting but it’s a healthy time that you spend with it. There’s something rewarding about that, that we can’t live without indefinitely. I just don’t know when that will be next."

Of the pandemic, he said, "Oh yeah, of course it slowed us down. We were fully prepared mentally and emotionally to hit the road and play our Surviving songs for people, and that went away. It messed us up. It messed me up anyway. I guess my response to that was not entirely wrong. I looked at what was happening, and I picked out what I could actually do about things versus what I wanted to do about things. Made quick decisions to let go of the things I can’t do anything about. And I just got busy. I started a podcast about music, and I just did a lot of things. But I skipped over the part about how I actually felt about it all. Literally it should be first – accept that it’s not ok, you’re not ok, and this is really messed up. I kinda skipped over that and went right to getting busy. That sort of kicked the can down the road for that emotional reckoning. When that slowly unraveled, it definitely stunted the creative output. Rewind and no, I’m not ok at all. But I feel like I’m in a decent place now, and creating music is exciting. It’s something we love to do. Like I said, it’s not something we can really get by without doing. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’ve been doing this for 30 years. We can’t not do it. Sometimes it’s more difficult to complete something you’re proud of but eventually we get there."

Jimmy Eats World and Manchester Orchestra at the Greek: 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 19 at the Greek Theatre.


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