AMG Review of Invented

Andrew Leahey
All Music Guide

It’s been 16 years since Jimmy Eat World released Static Prevails, one of the first emo albums issued by a major label, and nearly a decade since Bleed American proved the genre could be commercially successful. The guys are older now -- frontman Jim Adkins, although immortally baby-faced, is in his mid-30s -- and the slick, poppy sound that Bleed American helped introduce has been adopted by nearly every emo band since. Most of those new bands are younger than Jimmy Eat World, and Invented marks the point where the band begins to straddle two genres: one of them, the melodic emo-pop that helped popularize the group in the first place; the other, a more age-appropriate form of alternative rock, with lyrics that deal with the bandmates themselves as opposed to their teenage fans.