Jimmy Eat World and hot prospects Taking Back Sunday and The Format played Bender Arena Wednesday night to a packed crowd. The Format warmed up the crowd with songs such as their aptly titled probable first single, "The First Single." Taking Back Sunday stormed the stage next with the show's peak of physical energy. The main visual kinetics came from singer Adam Lazzara as he whipped his microphone all over the place, most notably around his neck and back around again with dazzling accuracy while bassist Matt Rubano hopped around the stage.
The majority of the band's set came from 2004's "Where You Want To Be," such as "The Union," "A Decade Under The Influence" and "Little Devotional." The band went acoustic for one song, the ballad "New American Classic." The band did play a few selections from its 2002 breakout debut, "Tell All Your Friends," such as "You're So Last Summer," "Great Romances Of the 20th Century" and "Cut From The Team (Cute Without the E)," but many usual live staples from the album, such as "Timberwolves At New Jersey" and "There's No 'I' in Team," were left out. Taking Back Sunday did, however, play two new songs, one of which, "Error Operator," is to be featured in the motion picture-based "Fantastic Four" video game due out this summer.
Next up came Jimmy Eat World, sporting an impressive stage set that included a bunch of TVs playing various black-and-white images and static and a backdrop with a blue outlined city that singer Jim Atkins described as straight out of "Tron." Although not as physically intense as Taking Back Sunday, the members of Jimmy Eat World visibly put all their hearts into an incredibly varied selection of songs from their past three records. The band covered a nearly equal number of songs from 1999's "Clarity," such as "Lucky Denver Mint," "Goodbye Sky Harbor" and "Blister"; from 2001's "Bleed American," such as the title track, "A Praise Chorus," "The Middle" and "Get It Faster"; and 2004's vastly underrated "Futures," such as the title track, "Kill," "23" and "Work." The band's encore was by far the crowd's strongest reaction, as the band played its recent single, "Pain," and the smash hit from 2001, "The Sweetness"
