Personal Pick: Weezer

I didn’t actually realise exactly how much I love Weezer until I was persuaded to join last.fm. Sure the entirety of Pinkerton occupies ten out of the twenty five most played tracks on my iTunes but I listen to most of my music on my iPod and was expecting things to drastically change once everything got scrobbled up. Then The Libertines, The Clash or The Smiths would surely take their place at the top of my pile. I was however, proved dramatically wrong. Weezer were crowned runaway champions of my mp3 library and therefore, it would seem a tad ludicrous not to spend my last ‘Personal Pick’ trying to persuade you all of their merits.

Popular perception of Weezer is to consistently lump them in with other pop-punk bands of the Blink 182 and Sum 41 variety, a perception much bolstered by strong rumours of a summer reunion tour with Blink. As fun as these bands are though, Weezer operate in a league entirely above them. This statement nevertheless needs some qualification. In all realism Weezer’s output has long matched that of Oasis’. Two stunningly good LPs to start with (The Blue Album, Pinkerton), an average follow up (The Green Album) and the rest veering wildly from dire (Make Believe) to reminiscent of old (The Red Album). Not that their later output has placed too great a stain on the earlier work, it’s just that Weezer have been denied their place on the pantheon of greats by a string of subsequent inconsistencies.

You will have no doubt of heard ‘Buddy Holly’ before, if only for the Happy Days tribute video, but The Blue Album’s finest moments bookend the LP. Both ‘My Name Is Jonas’ and ‘Only In Dreams’ are simply riff-tastic, the latter being an eight minute track of epic proportions. Pinkerton was the less commercially successful follow up, mainly because of its less than radio friendly feedback drenched sound and lyrics that whilst humorously self depreciating weren’t exactly appealing to middle America “I’m dumb she’s a lesbian / I thought I had found the one.” As a result of front man and song writer took off to Harvard to take his degree, vowing to never apply the same approach to song writing again.

When Weezer did finally return four years later with The Green Album, their resulting approach was to keep churning out the hit singles but drop the more experimental approach. It was only with 2008’s The Red Album that Weezer pointed to a true return to form with ‘The Angel and The One’, ‘The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived’ and YouTube smash ‘Pork and Beans’. Time will tell whether Red remains a blip on the radar but for past achievements alone, it’s worth holding out a slither of hope for Rivers Cuomo and the gang.

‘The Blue Album’ is currently on sale at the bargain basement price of £2.99 at play.com here