In my mind, even though we never released this tune, I think it’s one of my favorite Jimmy Eat World songs of all time. We recorded this song during the Futures session but took it off the album because it just didn’t really fit the vibe with the other tunes and after that, the timing never really felt that good to release it. Maybe because the song had already leaked and we never felt that motivated to officially release the tune.
But looking back on this song, we busted our ass getting it to the point of where it ended up. It sounds like a simple song but we recorded it many different times with several different arrangements, tempos, keys, etc… It was nuts. Gil Norton was the producer and we were having the album mixed by Rich Costey at Cello Studios in Hollywood. While Rich was mixing, we were tracking Jen in studio 3 at Cello which was famous for recording Pet Sounds and some Mammas and Pappas albums. We didn’t have any of our gear in town so I rented a kit and ended up using a ludwig acrolite that Chris Testa (grammy winning engineer who ended up engineering Chase This Light) had in studio A when he was tracking the band Gratitude (who coincidentally were friends of ours and ended up opening up for us on tour). While we were tracking Jen, Brian Wilson was in studio 2 working on a project and at one point, poked his head into the door of the control room of studio 3. “Holy shit!! Brian Wilson just walked into our control room!” That was incredible.
Anyway, that’s the basic story of Jen. We nearly killed ourselves recording a song we never released.
Zach Lind 
Good times. Let’s make more sometime. Hi to the crew.
Terrific song! My wife and honestly can’t listen to “Futures” without it included in the sequencing, and we included it on our wedding mix CD (got married Nov. 2004). One of my top-10 Jimmy Eat World tunes.