Written By: Jon Chattman

The death of grunge gave rise to "emo" pop rock in the early 2000s. Panic! At the Disco. Fall Out Boy. Dashboard Confessional. Yes, MTV’s TRL’s countdown soon blended mainstream R&B and syrupy boy and girl bands with emotive artists stuck in a soon-to-be overused genre category. Jimmy Eat World was thrown into that mix with their breakthrough Bleed American LP, which featured the breakout feel-good modern rock song "The Middle" and instant classic "Sweetness." The album, a follow-up to their Clarity debut, went platinum, but it was their follow-up three years later, that really broke the band away from the pack.

Futures is easily one of the most underrated albums to come out in the 2000s decade. Released in 2004, a year dominated by Green Day’s groundbreaking concept album American Idiot, Kanye West’s mega-debut College Dropout, and - to a lesser degree - U2’s How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, these Arizona natives’ album picked up where Bleed American left off, but added richer, darker lyrics to their traditional pop-rock hooks. Shifting away from “The Middle," the band took on painful breakups, past hook-ups, and drug-use as its soundtrack. Surefire hits "Pain" and "Work" helped the album reach gold status, but it's the songs that didn't make it to mainstream and alt-radio that really resonated. Jim Adkins, Tom Linton, Rick Burch, and Zach Lind are currently on the road supporting the tenth anniversary of what I’d consider, their true breakthrough album. It’s obvious they know it’s special and worth celebrating, and the audience that saw them live at The Capitol Theatre on Oct. 17, surely did as well - singing along to each song as if their lives depended on it.

In front of a near-sell out Port Chester crowd, the band played a set in three acts or if you want to look at it one set with two encores. First, the Arizonians played the eleven Futures songs in album order, followed by some deep cuts, and ending the night with "the hits." Let's start at the, well, start. The evening began powerfully with the title track "Futures," a song that seemed to hold more weight for most of the crowd (not that I can read minds - it just was a vibe I got) since we’re all ten years older: “Hey now, the past is told by those who win… my darling, what matters is what hasn't been…hey now, we're wide awake and we're thinking…”

Live standouts also included the one-two punch of “Work” and “Kill," the latter of which, um, killed, and "Polaris" which really showed off the musicianship of the band and the forceful charisma of front man Adkins. The slow-burning ballad "Drugs or Me" (naturally and rightfully so). The band segued from Futures to a six song follow-up which included three tracks off their equally-underrated Stay on My Side Tonight EP of 2005 and "My Best Theory," the lead single off their seventh studio album Invented. “Disintegration” ended that portion, and that EP cut was quite easily the highlight of the entire night. Starting off slow, building, and then finally unleashing more fury than a Jean Claude Van Damme bad movie, the audience went nuts: a mosh circle and crowd surfing broke out as the band shouted the parting line “lie lie better next time, stay on my side tonight oh…” It’s probably the first time I’ve seen a mosh pit since my grunge days of mid-to-late 1990s Roseland Ballroom. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.

The final portion of the evening saw the World playing the songs that put them on the proverbial map and the added bonus of I Will Steal You Back, the first single off their recent eighth studio album Damage. But, Bleed American is where the evening ended. Starting the back-to-back American tracks was a rousing version of the title track, and pop standout “The Authority Song.” The night naturally came to a close respectively with “Sweetness” and “The Middle.” The latter was a nice bookend, but nothing sounded better all night long than the crowd singing along to "Sweetneess." Each and every member of the crowd sang along to it:

Are you listening? Woah (oh, oh, oh,oh) Sing it back, woah (oh, oh)

Yeah, they did. We all did.