"Bleed American," the self-funded album Jimmy Eat World released back in 2001, has now earned the band their biggest UK headline show to date. They'll play London's Crystal Palace Bowl on Sunday, August 16 — the final stop of a three-date UK run that kicks off in Halifax on August 14, moves to Cardiff the following day, and wraps up in London that Sunday.
Here's the full schedule as announced by organizers (confirmed at time of publication, though it's subject to change): doors open at 2pm, Jay Som at 4:15pm, The Get Up Kids at 5:20pm, Rise Against at 6:40pm, and Jimmy Eat World closing things out at 8:30pm. With four acts filling out an entire afternoon into evening, this tour for one emo classic has essentially turned into a mini-festival.
The tour kicked off on June 9 at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, with the band playing "Bleed American" in full, alongside a mix of tracks from 1999's "Clarity" and 2004's "Futures," plus a handful of B-sides. Two songs stood out that night: "Disintegration," from the 2005 EP "Stay On My Side Tonight," made its first live appearance since 2014, while "(Splash) Turn Twist" from the 2004 EP "Firestarter" got its live debut.
Jim Adkins Rejects the "All-or-Nothing" Narrative
In a February interview with NME, frontman Jim Adkins was asked whether the band knew at the time that "Bleed American" was a make-or-break moment. His answer flipped the popular narrative on its head: "I get it, especially now — if you look back at our story from the outside, dropped by the label, funding the album ourselves, and then it takes off — it sounds exactly like 'this was the do-or-die moment, we bet everything on it.' But from where we stood, it wasn't like that at all. All that industry and business stuff was just background noise at the time."
On the album still finding new listeners more than two decades later, he said: "The people discovering this record now found it on their own terms, and they get to process it in their own way, make it something personal. As a listener, you can really feel what it means to you in the moment — that's powerful." That sentiment goes some way toward explaining how a 25th-anniversary tour ended up landing at London's biggest headline venue.
Beyond the tour, the band also dropped a six-track EP called "Something(s) Loud" late last year, featuring three digital singles — "Something Loud," "Place Your Debts," and a cover of Crooked Fingers' "Call to Love" — plus a previously unreleased older track, "Failure." Their last full-length studio album was 2019's "Surviving," which NME gave three stars at the time, writing that the record "explores the various weights my ego tells me I have to carry... They emerged alongside a wave of bands obsessed with digging up nostalgia and living in the past, but this band's bold step forward deserves to be welcomed."
Tickets are still available for the Crystal Palace Bowl show. Check with organizers for the latest on availability and any schedule changes.
