Clarity Vs. Bleed American
 

Both of these albums are landmarks in the Emo genre. Both of them are considered to be JEW's best. But which is better?

I will say, Bleed American is definitely the more popular album. It was their commercial breakthrough. And it is certainly a great album. But personally, I prefer Clarity. Not only is it more of an Emo album (Bleed American went in a poppier direction), but I feel it is stronger overall.

What do you think?

I've often contemplated this one.

I think both set out to achieve different things.

Clarity has the feeling of wide eyed optimistic youngsters who are enamored by life, it's possibilities and their lives ahead of them.
It's very dreamy and weaves in equal measurements of naivety and aspects of stargazing. Songs like Just Watch the Fireworks and Believe in What You Want just capture the beauty of the world and cleverly intertwine them with melancholy lyrics.

The musicianship in Clarity is often lauded as being extremely well constructed and harmonized, even down to the vocals if one were to look at Goodbye Sky Harbour.
It's less showy and crowd oriented than Bleed American and the focus is on the record itself as to singalong choruses and extroversion.
It's a very intimate introverted journey of self discovery. I imagine it would be the soundtrack to packing up all your belongings and skipping town with a girl you've loved for a week.

Bleed American, I wouldn't call so much emo as an important pop rock album. It's quite a departure from Clarity in that it's not a dreamy record wrapped up in the moment and spontaneous nature of how life could be, and rather a well thought out display of what life is.
There's a lot of relatable lyrics and themes in Bleed American. It's an album that's not up on a cloud like Clarity and has its feet set firmly in reality with songs like Get it Faster realizing not everything in life is as nice as it first seemed and rather point to negative aspects of life.

As I mentioned, Bleed American is more of a pop rock record. Big outlandish singalong choruses, heavier, less complicated musicianship. It feels less like a personal journey of discovery and more the forced anthem of your late teens/early twenties.
It's an album aimed at hitting a bigger audience and a larger demographic. It does that. It's more accessible than Clarity and possess more memorable individual songs.

Personally, I prefer Clarity. It's a unique voyage into the rest of life, stuffed with a plethora of wishful thinking and hope. It's more intimate, more personal. The music's frankly better and as an album it's more cohesive and better put together. Every nuance of every sound means something and is beautifully arranged.
Don't get me wrong, Bleed American is a wonderful album too, but Clarity represents Jimmy Eat World at their peak, when they were still on their own roads of self discovery and represents them at their best musically and probably the time of their lives when they were experiencing their best times.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Please tell me you write about music. Please, please, please tell me you write about music. If not, you should totally get a website or blog and write about music. You'd be awesome at it.

It's been a while since I've written something about music my friend.
I usually go into much greater depth and analysis. But have been consumed with University work and life outwith the internet recently.
Will get back at it soon.

What do you think of the rest of JEW's discography by the way?

Please tell me when you do, and be sure to send links, because I am eagerly awaiting it!

TBH, Futures is the last JEW album I listened to. The reason is, Futures was a very disappointing album for me, so I don't want to spend any money on their later albums. However, I'd like to give Futures another chance, and would you recommend their later albums? Also, I think Jimmy Eat World and Static prevails are great albums. This is how I would rank them from best to worst:

Clarity
Bleed American
Static Prevails
Jimmy Eat World
Futures

Yeah, I never got into Futures either. Of course, perhaps it would have been different if I had heard the record without having first heard Clarity and Bleed American, but apart from one or two catchy songs like Pain and Jen it's not really an album I've put much time into.
I just don't think there's much depth. Most of it is pretty decent but there's nothing overly redeemable or anything that differentiates it from the million and one pretty decent pop punk records out there.

There's nothing after Futures I'd bother with apart from the occasional song, but they're few and far between. There's nothing technically wrong with their later input. It's catchy and fun and is accessible to a larger demographic. Could easily make for a mixtape compilation in some hack's spring break trip or just as easily feature prominently on radio/MTV.

However it's such a departure from the genuine emotion and intricate musicianship of Clarity that it's always disappointing knowing JEW are still kicking about making lackluster records when they've already proven they're capable of far more.
I think it's just like with Weezer, they're two different bands.

There's the younger, emotional guys who valued making music with meaning that could resonate in the soul. And there's everything else the two bands have produced which is passable but just not necessary. I tend to think of both bands of not existing beyond Bleed American and Pinkerton respectively.

I'd compare Bleed American to Weezer(Green), pop centric however shallow and basic compared to previous Static Prevails and Clarity.And all goes downwards from there on.

You think Bleed American is shallow?
I'll agree it lost a considerable amount of its personality when compared to Clarity, but I hardly think it's devoid of emotional expression or significance.
Will agree, that anything after barring a few songs on Futures isn't really worth much attention, but I think your critique on Bleed American is a little unfair.

It's not an emo album per se, if I'm remembering correctly it was their first on a major label and as such had to open up to a wider demographic, pretty sure people would have found a reason to complain had they put out a similar record to Clarity.
I don't think it's music progression as much as it was adaption to their new role. And I think it was a good adaptation, in my eyes it's still a good record and had any other band dropped it, I believe it would be even more critically lauded than it already is.

They recorded Bleed American without a label, using their own funds. They were dropped by Capitol after Clarity did not meet the label's commercial expectations. Geffen snapped them up after the initial success of Bleed American and their old label Capitol even made them another offer!

Bleed American was the first album I heard from them. The album was popular with some of my friends in school at the time and it brings back some good memories. I thought that Futures was fairly good, just not as good as Bleed American and Clarity. It's a lot different from Bleed American and had a darker and more mature sound. It's another album that brings back some good memories from my final year in secondary school and I think that Work was one of their best singles.

Must be the middle that make me view this alb negatively.i can't help but see it as music that was written to appeal to teenage girls and them conforming to the pop punk style that was popular during that time.

Still it's leaps years ahead of what came after with all time low and the likes of them