LIVE REVIEW: Jimmy Eat World, Rise Against, The Get Up Kids, Jay Som, Crystal Palace Bowl, London, 16/08/2026

Opening proceedings of the mini pseudo-festival, Los Angeles’ Jay Som at first felt a little out of place. Given what everyone knew was to come, the gentle indie rock drifting from the stage, with even the sharpest guitar licks and pounding drums retaining an almost lethargic calm, felt almost misleading. Baybee and Superbike gradually injected more energy, but there was always something chilled-out about the performance, the band seemingly in no hurry to get anywhere. Want It All added a simmering sense of rage beneath its slower exterior, while the Jim Adkins-featuring Float, with the figurative frontman-of-the-day adding soaring harmonies to last year’s collab, and the Cranberries-esque The Bus Song its dreamy melodies feeling almost tailor-made for an increasingly warm London afternoon, helped see the set home. 7/10

The Get Up Kids followed, and as good as Jay Som was, the tonal shift was as sudden as it was needed. Satellite and I’m a Loner Dottie, a Rebel had a sizeable portion of the crowd shouting every word, while The Problem Is Me and Valentine brought a little more bounce to the Bowl. Red Letter Day and New-Found Masswere greeted warmly before the slower Better Half gave everyone a moment to breathe. Action & Action saw screaming cheers buffeting the crowd, and a final due of Holiday and Ten Minutes rounded out a set that felt like a welcome reminder of just how influential that early-2000s wave of emo and pop-punk remains. The group were admittedly a little buried by what was to come — you can’t out punk-rock one of the greatest to do it, especially playing just beforehand — but a great set nevertheless. 7/10

Speaking of Rise Against, it was finally time for Tim McIlrath and company. A long ol’ intro slowly worked the crowd up, mosh pits opening before the band had even appeared — although still a little on the intermittent side, the crowd’s energy having been sapped by the not-visible-but-ever-felt summer sun — and then, when they finally did, faces grinning as they raced towards their instruments, it was like a switch had been flipped. Who doesn’t love a bit of cathartic screaming? Some unhinged shouting, fists pumping into the air?

Re-Education (Through Labor) came first, the pounding instrumental bridge roaring across the Bowl, before Under the Knife and Ready to Fall followed, the latter seeing the group demanding an old-fashioned call-and-response from the crowd. “This ain’t my first rodeo,” Tim warned. “I know you can be loud when you want to be.” And obviously, Crystal Palace wanted to be. clouds of dust helping shroud the main stage in a miasma of hay-fever hating haze

Give It All seemed to suck the crowd into a whirlpool, clouds of dust rising from the dry ground to shroud the main stage in a miasma of detritus straight out of a hay-fever sufferer’s nightmare, while Nod — Ricochet’s somehow a year old already — and the ever-fantastic Satellite kept the momentum going, McIlrath’s solo electric guitar sounding surprisingly country-y as he introduced the latter… before erupting into something much heavier, the ever-present megaphone breaking out for the final, blood-blazing chorus. The Good Left Undone gave way to Prayer of the Refugee, unbridled joy flitting across the thousands of faces beaming at the stage, while Swing Life Away stripped everything back, McIlrath alone with an acoustic guitar, as he reflected on 1997 when his old band — maybe Baxter, maybe Arma Angelus — had opened for both The Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World. One part “fucking hell, still doing the same old thing”, and one part “wow, still getting to do the same old thing”.

With the rest of the band returning for Chamber the Cartridge, the group imparting their well-earned wisdom — “it sounds a lot fucking better with your fists in the air” — it was almost the end of the set. They’d only played London a year-and-a-bit ago, a lot more recently than many or even most international bands of their calibre, but it still felt like way too long an absence. And they weren’t even off stage yet!

A final Saviour brought the set to a close, as rousing and riotous as ever, and signalled it was Jimmy Eat World preparation time. Sadly, neither Living Undercover nor Katy Bar The Door had made it into the set, the latter especially feeling like the most ‘Rise Against-y’ song Rise Against had released in a while, but that just leaves something to get excited for the UK shows they better be doing next year! 10/10

And, finally, the reason the event was even happening — Jimmy Eat World, and their milestone celebration of Bleed American. First, though, some musical edging — an amuse-oreilles, if you will — as the group played a quartet of tracks from Clarity tracks before the main event. And, as impatient writing this review as the crowd seemed in Crystal Palace, let’s race through them: Clarity itself took us nearly three decades back, followed by Your New Aesthetic, the band briefly illuminated by flashes of light as though the “new aesthetic” in question was a collection of gloomy pop-punk wraiths. Tom Linton took the lead vocals for Blister, Lucky Denver Mint brought another deservedly huge cheer… and then, it was time. The lights went out (again) as the stage was rearranged to give the band more space to play with — and then what better way to start Bleed American than with Bleed American?

Fine, sure, that’s how the album goes anyway, but still.

A Praise Chorus followed, an entirely too underrated track in an album of greats, before Jim Adkins, seemingly taken aback by the crowd, took a second. What pearls of wisdom would he drop, what introspective insights?

“…Yeah I’ve got nothing. This is entirely what this moment is about.”

If the moment had its own moment, though, it would of course be The Middle. Normally you’d make some pithy remark about the iconic anthem feeling more than the sum of its parts, the crowd ballooning past what’s possible through the sheer wall of sound thrown up in adoration. Not really necessarily when it’s a biggest UK headline set. Instead, it was what you’d expect — an entire Bowl of people, singing and dancing along to a track that, at least for the more elderly emos in the crowd, soundtracked their coming of age.

Your House stripped things down to just Atkins and an acoustic guitar, for the most part anyway, while Sweetness somehow felt the loudest of the night so far, if only from the jubilant crowd sing alongs. Hear You Me retained its delicate emotional weight, Robin Vining’s twinkling keys helping preserve the song’s ethereal, emotional quality; then, “onto side two everybody!”

If You Don’t, Don’t felt almost pleading a sort of desperate yearning, while the menacing intro of Get It Closer felt perfectly suited to the now-dark sky — and, by the end it, was said to have had the “gnarliest” reaction from a crowd the band had seen.  The more introspective Cautioners slowed everything down again before The Authority Song brought the energy back, the album playback ebbing and flowing, and the final gentle strums of My Sundown saw the band silhouetted against beams of piercing blue lights.

That was that for Bleed American, with a handful of the songs not having had airing since 2011, barsimilar anniversary sets anyway. And sure, there’s been dozens by now, but still!

And so, with the set ‘finished’, the band left the stage. Well, a little palate cleanser of a crowd screaming and cheering, shouting for more, never hurt anyone. But it was at least the start of the end. Breaking into the token Bleed American song of Disintegration, what followed was a final ‘Best Of’ quartet — Pain, with fans clambering onto each others’ shoulders, screeching along; For Me This Is Heaven and Big Casino straight after felt oddly wholesome, and then the final few strums of 23, the crowd simultaneous close to tears and shuffling towards the exits in a bid to beat the traffic home.

‘I don’t know what to say”, Atkins said. “There’s so much gratitude here, in this moment; I can’t thank you enough. Thank you, thank you. I’ll stop. Okay… Maybe one more time. Thank you so much”.

There’s always something wonderfully uncomplicated about the joy you get from live music, but the combination of Rise Against and Jimmy Eat World delivered it in abundance. Whether it was thousands of people screaming The Middle back at Adkins or a circle pit erupting beneath McIlrath bombarding the crowd in Give It All, there was a just a sense of love in the air that you can’t find anywhere else — especially when the source is both angry and happy enough for a crowd to breathe a collective sigh of cathartic release. Oddly beautiful. 10/10

Written By: James O’Sullivan