Maybe you’re still a fan. Maybe the make you think of yourself as an angsty teenager. Or maybe their sound brings to mind Taylor Swift lip-syncing in an Apple Music ad. Whatever it is that brings them to mind in 2016, Jimmy Eat World remain on of the biggest and most iconic pop-punk bands around.

With their ninth album to date, ‘Integrity Blues’ released in October, the band are still finding ways to change up their recording process, and are still just as excited to be on the road.

Before releasing ‘Integrity Blues’, drummer Zach Lind told GoldenPlec how Jimmy Eat Work still get nervous releasing new material. After all, “we worked really hard. We always work hard on our albums, but on this album we did the very best we could absolutely do and we feel really good about it. And it’s that sense of satisfaction and excitement that makes you a little bit nervous too because you want other people to feel the same thing.”

After a few albums, some bands can find it hard to keep things fresh but this album had the necessary originality, both from the perspective of the band, and that of fans. “There are some surprises,” Lind explains. “That was one of the things we set out to do. We went about making this record differently than we’d ever done. In our method, that yielded some different results that we might not normally have been able to achieve.”

More than ever before, Jimmy Eat World relied on their producer, and their own spontaneity. After their last album (2013’s ‘Damage’) the band toured consistently for a couple of years and then took a year off. A year completely separated from all things Jimmy Eat World, where each of the members could focus on whatever they wanted to. Then, afterwards, they came back and stared afresh. They flew through making the album.

“That break gave us an added perspective that we haven’t had before,” says Lind. “It also gave us a hunger that we might have lost. A hunger we didn’t know we were missing. Then when we decided to start making the record things went really fast. We didn’t take a long time to write like we normally do. That kind of forced a spontaneity, forced us to rely more on our producer, Justin Meldal-Johnsen. He was awesome to work with. We pushed things around and did things as we went, we didn’t have everything planned. It made the record more spontaneous and fresh sounding.”

As far as the album goes, it’s a pretty self-reflective piece. “The overall record is about how we live our lives with this expectation of how we want things to be. And sometimes when life doesn’t turn out that way it’s easy to beat ourselves up about it and take it personally. It can short circuit our ability to live in the moment and appreciate the things that are all around us and help us right now to achieve progress and growth. The record is more nuanced than that but that’s one of the main things.”

Jimmy Eat World also shared a letter written by vocalist Jim Adkins that explains the importance of taking responsibility, and accepting the way things are and moving on, a theme that carries through ‘Integrity Blues’.

Jimmy Eat world saw a little spark in sales and interest when Taylor Swift was shown lip syncing to their song The Middle. Speaking about that, Lind explains that the relationship between the artists goes back a few years. It wasn’t entirely a surprise, he explains, “we had been notified that it may happen. We weren’t sure exactly. We had been told it was a possibility. [The relationship] started several years ago, we got contacted because she used to write a lyric on her arm at shows and a few times she had used Jimmy Eat World lyrics and then she would play a show and people could see the lyric on her arm. And so that was the first time we had realised she was a fan of us. And so just over the years we’ve become fans of her. We really like her, she invited Jim to play The Middle with her when she played a show in Phoenix. And I took my wife and daughter and the show was really good, she is actually a great singer and songwriter. So there’s a mutual respect. We’ve always been appreciative of her support of us.”

When it comes to things like Apple Music and Spotify, Lind doesn’t really think anything about them, good or bad, except that it’s good for music fans because they can access a variety of music so easily.

Jimmy Eat World formed in 1993, and so have witnessed and been involved in many of the changes in the music industry, the biggest difference Lind sees is the way in which people consume music. “People will listen to playlists, people won’t play albums as much. It makes us raise the bar for the music we release, like if we are gonna release a record it can’t just have a few really good songs on it and the rest are just okay. The record needs to be really, really strong from top to bottom so that if people wanna put them in a playlist any of them will seem like good songs. We have to be really intentional in the music we release and make sure it’s our best material or else it’s like, why release it?”

After 23 years, the band are still enjoying both life on the road and the recording process, “when you’re in the middle of recording you’re just thinking “man, I can’t wait to get on the road and play these songs.” Then at the end of a long tour you’re kinda thinking “I want to get back into the studio and make some more music. It’s kind of a nice rhythm because you get the best of both worlds.”

With that kind of a mindset it seems like Jimmy Eat World aren’t going anywhere any time soon.