Weezer Hurley (Epitaph)
2/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Anyone under the age of 20 reading this review might wonder why we old timers still give a crap, but Weezer were good once - really good – and the LA quartet's agonizing transformation into purveyors of soulless, dead-eyed glossy pop-rock would hurt so much less had they not begun their career with such a peerless tour de force, emerging from The Golden State in 1994 with a self-titled debut marked by bittersweet nostalgia trips, tragi-comic recollections of all-too-identifiable jealousy, loneliness and sexual neuroses, replete with humongous guitar hooks and choruses.
1996's follow-up Pinkerton saw enigmatic frontman Rivers Cuomo mining significantly darker but no less compelling territory, baring all as undiluted emo catharsis and darkly humorous admissions were added to the heady brew.
The band would not return again until 2001, but as the decade progressed would churn out a series of increasingly vacuous albums (Maladroit, Make Believe [shudder], The Red Album, Raditude) and involved themselves in ever-more unlikely MTV-friendly collaborations. This was a harrowing, irrevocable decline of George Best style proportions - indeed, Rivers' plaintive cry of “things were better then/Once, but never again” on their first album’s colossal opener 'My Name is Jonas' never seemed more grimly apposite.
Hurley, inexplicably named for the Lost character of the same name found on its cover and initially streamed via Weezer's official MySpace page (insert joke about once-invincible obsolete anachronism desperate to rekindle former glories) isn't, superficially, all that bad, serving up short, sharp bursts of punchy, immediate guitar pop, although the lyrics remain jaw-droppingly inappropriate: 'Memories’ contains some rudimentary 'Let's Partaaaay!!' lines so cringe-inducing that decorum prohibits listing them here.
The now 40 year old Cuomo grimly persists on writing from the grossly incongruous perspective of a love-sick teenager, so we are forced to endure a wet-behind-the-ears narrator recalling the object of his unrequited affections “meeting in the lunch room” as the “boys going crazy for you.” This isn't tortured, just plain weird. “'I wanna be a bad boy right now” he grimaces on 'Smart Girls', a tune so clinical and polished that its nearest reference point might well be Katy Perry's ‘Hot N Cold.' There is a track here entitled 'Trainwrecks'; perhaps an opportunity for Rivers to exhibit some chastened, long –overdue self-awareness? Not so, alas, as he spews some nonsense about how he “sleeps all day and rocks all night” over a forgettable generic chug-a-lug, by-the-book 80s stadium-rock backing.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to stick 'El Scorcho' on...
Weezer - Memories by Epitaph Records
Artists in this article: Weezer
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