They could prove that “The Middle” wasn’t just a fluke hit. Futures sounded appropriately huge, and there was some feeling-particularly in radio singles like “Pain” and “Work”-that Jimmy Eat World could be a massive radio rock band for the new millennium if they wanted to be. They’d made Futures with Gil Norton, a well-respected rock producer known for making big, robust rock albums.

The second possible path was for Jimmy Eat World to keep following their arc as a glossy studio band. The first was to embrace the moody, late night autumnal vibe that manifested on songs like “Polaris” and “23.” That path evidently led to Stay on My Side Tonight, which was made up of songs the band had written for Futures but hadn’t finished or put on the record. Futures gave the band two basic paths forward.

An album packed of songs like “Disintegration” and “Closer”? Count me in.Ĭhase This Light was decidedly not that record. (I was 13 when the former came out and 16 for the arrival of the latter.) The wait was eased a bit by the 2005 release of the Stay on My Side Tonight EP, but the dark, moody nature of those songs only made me want a full-length. As often happens when you’re young, the three years that stretched between the Octorelease of Futures and the Octorelease of Chase This Light seemed to last an eternity. Futures had been a game-changer for me, the album that transformed me from a budding music listener into a voracious, lifelong die-hard. I’m not sure I have ever anticipated a new album with quite the furor that I anticipated Jimmy Eat World’s Chase This Light in the fall of 2007.

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