Wednesday 15/06/05 Jimmy Eat World @ Academy, Bristol

The term “hardcore following” may well have been invented for Jimmy Eat World – outside a gig at London’s Astoria earlier this year a huge crowd began queueing for that night’s gig - at two in the afternoon. So it’s no surprise that even at a show that desn’t exactly set the stage alight, the fans in the front and all those right through to the upper balconies are 100% involved in the music, singing every word as if it came from inside of them instead of their heroes.

The show starts well, with frontman Jim Adkins coming out alone to pluck out the opening of 'For Me This Is Heaven'. His delivery was perfect and the applause grew to fever pitch as his bandmates came out one by one and added their instruments into the song. From there it was straight into the angular, frenetic anthem 'Salt Sweat Sugar', which is as good a rock song as any.

'Lucky Denver Mint' is enough then to cement “A Good Show”, the rest of it didn’t seem to matter after an opening trio as good as that. Which is lucky, because after that the gig fell apart cataclysmically. Jimmy Eat World are a group that are exempted from the emo-band mire because they’ve managed to write a lot of introspective, self-worth material, complemented by some really, really great pop songs. Unfortunately they played all of these at the start of the show, and so it could only be downhill from here.

As a band, there’s probably very little Jimmy Eat World could do that would knock them from the pedestals they’ve been placed on by their massive following. Maybe they deserve it; they’re hard work, but worth it if you want to get something back. And a lot of people do.