Jimmy Eat World | The Get Up Kids | Rise Against
The Piece Hall, Halifax
14th August 2026
Arizona emo titans make the trip across the pond for the first of three 25th anniversary shows for their seminal album Bleed American. Louder Than War’s Dave Beech was there.
The older you get, the rarer it is you find yourself excited about going to gigs. Whether it’s the late nights, the aching knees, or just the fact you’ve seen the band several times before, by the time you’re in your 30s, the initial excitement of early gigs has well and truly worn off. At least for the most part.
Approaching tonight’s gig at Halifax’s iconic Piece Hall, we can’t help but feel a level of excitement for the show we haven’t for years. Not just for the headliners, though Jimmy Eat World doing Bleed American in full warrants that in itself, but for the line-up as a whole.
As it happens, we arrive just as seminal Kansas City emo band The Get Up Kids are finishing up. A band that has eluded us several times previously, tonight is no different, though what little we heard from outside of the venue is enough to know we’ll keep trying in the future. Thankfully, however, arriving when we do allows us to thread our way through the crowd towards the front with surprising ease just as Chicago punks Rise Against emerge on stage.
It’s a breakneck set. And with the band swerving any material from after 2011, it’s a set chock-full of fan favourites and crowd pleasures. Hinged largely on 2006’s The Sufferer & The Witness (an album celebrating its 20th anniversary this year), tracks such as Chamber The Cartridge and The Good Left Undone join set staples such as Prayer Of The Refugee. Elsewhere, Swing Life Away provides an emotional moment of breathing space, finding the crowd in full voice before an anthemic Saviour closes their set out in fine fashion.
By this time the venue has filled up. A mix of residents, elder emo kids and general music fans, all of which makes for a welcoming crowd, the vast majority of whom have all grown up listening to Bleed American. Surprisingly, however, it’s not the abrasive opening riff of the eponymous track that kicks things off, but the soaring guitars and clattering drums of Clarity.
We’re treated to a cross-section of Clarity, with Your New Aesthetic, Blister and emotional Table For Glasses warming up the crowd ahead of the main event. It’s a surprising start, but one we have zero complaints about. From here, the alarm-esque guitars of Bleed American signify the start of the real celebrations and unsurprisingly find the crowd in full voice. Though not the first time we’ve seen Jimmy Eat World, it certainly feels the best; the energy and emotion that ripples through the crowd clearly feeding the band on stage.
Elsewhere, a hat trick of A Praise Chorus, Your House and The Middle provides a joyous 15 minutes or so. The latter, so often reserved for encores, makes for an explosion of emotion within the crowd, the tears and smiles that are plastered across the faces of those around us nothing but genuine. Hear You Me provides the set’s most sombre moment, leaving not a dry eye in the house, with this writer especially not having cried like this at a show before.
As such, it falls to a soaring rendition of If You Don’t, Don’t to lift spirits, and signify that we’re nearing the end of the album. Not before a bouncy, angular Authority Song makes for an impressive singalong, before eyes are moistened again as they close out Bleed American with an emotional outing of My Sundown.
Indeed, a record that clearly means the world to much of the crowd, and a record that arguably turned an entire generation onto emo and emo culture, the influence of Bleed American, and indeed Jimmy Eat World, is something that can never be called into doubt.
Of course, the album might be over, but the show isn’t just yet. Re-emerging back on stage for a five-song encore, kicking off with 2005 deep cut Disintegration. A track that’s been absent from setlists for years now, it’s a welcome inclusion and a welcome nod to the sheer nostalgia of this evening. A blistering Pain provides a brief moment of weight and aggression (at least as far as Jimmy Eat World go), but things are soon softened with another offering from Clarity in the form of For Me This Is Heaven. Big Casino offers up the evening’s only material from Chase This Light while 23 brings a hugely cathartic end to the proceedings perfectly.
A perfect set list, a beautiful venue, and a band who mean so much to so many, tonight at The Piece Hall isn’t just the best Jimmy Eat World gig we’ve been to; it’s up there with the best gigs we’ve been to. Period. Here’s to another 25 years.
~
You can see more of Dave Beech’s writing on Louder Than War here.
Photo by Cuffe and Taylor and The Piece Hall.
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