COLUMN: Weezer gets back to basics with ‘Hurley’
I think I just wet my pants. Not because I drank too much water and am far away from the bathroom, not because I have a bladder condition and not because my zipper is stuck.
It’s because I just saw the cover of the new Weezer album.
It is simple and intriguing, featuring nothing but a close-up photo of Jorge Garcia, known for playing the hairy yet lovable Hurley in the hit television series “Lost.” And to make it even better, the album is called “Hurley.”
I must say, after I had changed my pants, the album cover alone made my weak.
While many bands enjoy using complex artwork on their CD covers, Weezer has always been pretty conservative. They often just use a picture of themselves with different colored backgrounds, as with “Make Believe” and their three self-titled albums, better known as the Blue, Green and Red albums. “Simple yet intriguing” has always been their style – in album art as well as in music – and “Hurley” keeps with the norm.
From just seeing the album cover, one has to wonder what Weezer is getting at. Granted, I love the album art, but does naming an album after a TV character have some sort of deeper meaning? Spoiler Alert: since everyone on “Lost” ended up being dead anyway, is this some kind of reference to the afterlife and that which awaits us? Or were they just trying to up their sales by getting all the “Lost” addicts to buy their album?
On second thought, it’s usually a good policy to not try and explain why rock bands do things. You’ve just got to accept it at face value and move on.
Right from the first track, you notice that after their not-so-acclaimed album “Ratitude,” Weezer has definitely gone back to their roots. The songs wouldn’t necessarily sound out of place on the Green album, but they are definitely fresh and new.
The band uses some new musical techniques that keep their music fresh while maintaining their trademark garage-band sound. For example, the song “Unspoken” employs the use of jazz flute and strings to back up the vocals and acoustic guitar in a wonderful way. An odd choice for a song about not forgiving and unspoken hate, but it works.
As usual, Weezer uses some simple back-up vocals to accentuate the lead vocals. Also, frontman Rivers Cuomo has stepped up his performance from the early albums; his vocals are much more varied and animated than before. In one of the bonus tracks, they cover Coldpay’s “Viva la Vida,” and Cuomo actually sounds a bit different than usual. It could be that he isn’t used to singing any songs but his own.
Cuomo doesn’t disappoint when it comes to writing witty, random lyrics, either. “Memories” gives a lot of one-liners about the good old times as a young band, such as “… playing Hacky Sack back when Audioslave was still Rage.” Also, the song “All My Friends Are Insects” is reminiscent of the randomness of They Might Be Giants, and thoroughly confused me – is a worm really considered an insect?
One of the lyrical highlights of the album would have to be the song “Where’s My Sex?” It’s really confusing until you realize that they wrote a song about losing and looking for their socks, and then replaced the word “socks” with “sex” throughout the whole song. It just goes to show that no matter how old rock bands get – Weezer has been together for almost 20 years – they’re really just 15 years old at heart.
Overall, it’s a good album. One that will probably not outdo the early releases such as the Blue or Green albums, but is definitely worth the $10 you’d pay for it on amazon.com. And besides, any CD that inspired Jorge Garcia, or “Hurley,” to perform “Perfect Situation” with Weezer at a live concert is worth your time. The video is on YouTube. Just make sure your bladder’s empty before you watch it.
– rex.colin.mitchell@aggiemail.com