AUSTRALIAN band Sarkadia was the support act for this tour, although tonight was their last performance with Jimmy Eat World.
The last time they played in Leeds was at the smaller Cockpit venue, so it seems understandable that they appeared quite nervous with a larger audience. Nonetheless, they managed to warm up the crowd, leaving them eager for more.
Finally, the lights went down and the band we were all there to see appeared onstage. As the intro to ‘Big Casino’, kicked in the crowd went wild – pushing, shoving and jumping with more energy than you could imagine. ‘Sweetness’ with its infectious chorus followed, with the crowd singing along to every word coming from frontman Jim Adkins’ mouth. Adkins used the breaks between songs to interact with his audience – joking with them, reminding everyone to look out for each other and stay safe and mentioning that the crowd last time they played in Leeds were equally as crazy.
The set list featured a variety of songs from the majority of their albums, with ‘Disintegration’ making a surprise appearance from their ‘Stay on my Side Tonight’ EP. They played a mixture of their slower and more upbeat songs, which gave the energetic crowd and opportunity to rest after some serious dancing. The classics, ‘Work’, ‘Futures’ and of course, ‘Bleed American’ were played along with new single ‘Always Be’.
‘Pain’ was chosen as the closer for the set, but it just seemed natural for them to do an encore. It was during this that Adkins swapped his electric guitar for an acoustic and the audience looked on in awe as ‘Your House’ and ‘Hear You Me’ were played out. As Adkins finished, his electric guitar returned, ‘I bet you can’t guess what we’re going to play now!’ he teased. Of course, it was ‘The Middle’ and once again the crowd went wild. With one last thanks to their audience, Jimmy Eat World left the stage and it was all over. One thing is for sure though; if you weren’t lucky enough to get tickets for this tour then you missed out. Big time.
