Weezer - Hurley

Tue 12th Oct, 2010 in Music Reviews

It’s hard to fathom exactly what the state of mind of Weezer currently is considering the rollercoaster ride of releases over the past few years. Sixteen years on from the release of Weezer’s critically acclaimed Blue Album, the power pop quartet has returned with their eighth album album Hurley.

At first glance, Hurley looks like one of the biggest musical disasters since well….Weezer’s last album Raditude. That record was critically panned, which cames as no great surprise to fans considering the odd appearance of Lil Wayne.

However, despite the cover artwork, Hurley is actually a pretty damn good album and the record represents a return to form for the band.

It’s clear that Weezer have moved on from the days of the classic Pinkerton and Blue Album records. Over time the band’s sound has shifted from the harsher alternative end of the spectrum to a more professional, laid back pop styling.

The opening track and first single Memories, defines this laid back pop style. Rivers Cuomo’s strongly major vocal melodies, Beverly Hills Cop era synths, glockenspiel counter-melodies and a driving rock beat all fuse to form a lighthearted track that sounds like it should have been in an 80s John Hughes movie.

However, Memories also suffers from intolerably bad lyrics penned by Cuomo that are riddled throughout the album. A fan would hope that over twenty years, a songwriter would drastically improve their writing. However with shallow lyrics like “Now I got so many people that I got to look out for, Never know when I’ll become awake and buy some food at the store”, one has to question what has happened to the Rivers outstanding writing of the early 90s.

However whilst some of the aforementioned lyrics are just dull, some are just purely insane. When Cuomo belts out “Mom made my sex, she knitted it with her hands. Sex-making is, a family tradition”, one has to wonder what the hell his childhood was actually like.

Despite the mediocre lyrics feature throughout the album, the consistent element that works in Cuomo’s favour is his vocal melodies. In a true pop style his vocal hooks are catchy, melodious and serve as a great improvement of those on Raditude. They’re the one element that manages to save a track like Where’s My Sex from being a total write off. Most notably the pop hooks on Unspoken, Ruling Me and Hang On manage to lift Hurley to a point where it can actually be enjoyed, rather than shunned in the same fashion as many Weezer records of late.

As with previous Weezer’s albums, the instrumentation of Hurley is exceptional, with Brian Bell, Scott Shriner and Pat Wilson providing a strong foundation for the tracks penned by Cuomo. However in a real pop style, solos have been killed off in favour of repetition of choruses, which is a real disappointment the great instrumental performance that Weezer has previously demonstrated with tracks like Say it Ain’t So.

Overall, whilst Hurley may not be the next Blue Album, it certainly meets the high standards set by some of Weezer’s more modern releases. Hurley has managed to prove that Weezer isn’t giving up on living the rock star dream, or at least not without making another 20 million dollars.