Two years ago, the Arizona band Jimmy Eat World looked like emo’s great major-label hope. " Lucky Denver Mint, " a sweetly cooing rocker from their second Capitol disc, Clarity, was featured on the soundtrack to the Drew Barrymore movie Never Been Kissed and became a minor radio hit. But Clarity never broke out of the college-rock ghetto, and the group soon found themselves without a label. Undaunted, they continued writing and touring, eventually recruiting long-time producer Mark Trombino (Blink-182, Creeper Lagoon) and heading into the studio on their own.

" We were like, ‘Fuck it, let’s just do it,’  " says singer Jim Adkins over the phone from Calgary, where the band are finishing up a short stint with Blink-182 before kicking off a four-week US headlining tour at the Paradise this Saturday. " Then we can take our finished product around to whatever label is interested in meeting with us. And if they don’t give us exactly what we want, it’s like, ‘Oh well, whatever. We’ll just put it out ourselves.’ Walking into these labels with our finished album, we held all the cards. "

The group ended up signing with DreamWorks, which released JEW’s new Bleed American in July. Boasting ample doses of melody, grit, fun, and sorrow, the disc is one of the most fully realized efforts to emerge from the emo trenches and a definite candidate for college-rock album of the year. It hasn’t gone unappreciated, either: both Rolling Stone and Spin have run laudatory features about the band, and the disc debuted at a respectable #54 on the charts. All of which, of course, poses no small threat to Jimmy Eat World’s cred-conscious indie fan base.

" We probably made our most accessible record completely without the pressures of people telling us we needed to make things more accessible, " says Adkins. " It’s kind of funny how that turned out. We’ve just all gotten really into songs. " Indeed, the album’s piercing lead single, " Bleed American, " seems well-positioned to join Weezer’s " Hash Pipe " in sneaking a little pop onto the metal-saturated rock airwaves. To that end, Adkins remains cautiously optimistic. " I could see it, but I could also see a lot of other stuff happening on the radio that isn’t that just boggles my mind. Like Joe Pernice. With songs like his, I don’t understand why he isn’t huge. "

Bleed American succeeds in ways both expected (the weepy break-up tunes " Your House " and " If You Don’t, Don’t " ) and unexpected (a rollicking meditation on the art of picking up girls called, ahem, " The Authority Song " ). Throughout the disc, the band explore themes of deliverance and personal fulfillment with an empathy that recalls early U2. " I kind of figured that these are songs that we’re going to be playing out live for a long time, so they should be fun to play, " says Adkins. " I always like mixing happy-sounding music with bummer lyrics. But it’s also kind of fun to instill a little hope into the bummer lyrics. "