Jimmy Eat World are finishing their fourth record in a California studio with longtime producer Mark Trombino. Due out early next year, the album is "a little bit darker" than their 2001 breakthrough Bleed American, frontman Jim Adkins says. "But I'm sure dark for us is nowhere near dark for most."

The band plans to record sixteen new songs -- more than will make the record. Already five weeks into the sessions, Adkins says there are a couple more to go. "No matter how much time you give yourself, you wish you had more," he says. "But it sounds really good."

One song he's particularly happy with is "Kill," which never repeats lyrics, even in the chorus. "I always wanted to try that," he says, "but it never really worked out."

In the meantime, the band will release their first DVD, Believe In What You Want, on October 7th. The package includes a twelve-song set recorded last year at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., a five-song live CD, and a documentary about the making of Bleed. The forty-five-minute film chronicles the group's roller coaster ride from major-label act to indie outfit on tour in Europe just to raise enough money to record.

"At that time, we fully believed we would end up pressing [Bleed American] ourselves," Adkins says. "The idea of having a DVD was the furthest thing from our mind. We were documenting everything more for ourselves than for the purpose that we might show this to people . . . or that anyone would care to see it."

BLAIR R. FISCHER
(September 24, 2003)