ALBUMS
Weezer
Perennially boyish punk-poppers pay sunny homage to 80s glam-metal.
Van Weezer CRUSH/ATLANTIC
Teenage riffs are hard to beat on this, Weezer’s fifteenth album, which is billed as frontman Rivers Cuomo’s nostalgic tribute to his adolescent love of classic 80s hair-metal. The clues are certainly here, from florid guitar solos and crunchy power chords to the Van Halenhomage title, lyric name-checks for Aerosmith, plus winking musical nods to Ozzy, Mötley Crüe and more.
Delayed for more than a year by the pandemic, Van Weezer is actually the prolific LA quartet’s second long-play release this year following orchestral baroque-pop collection OK Human, which sounds in theory like a greater stylistic leap than in reality. Both albums are firmly grounded in Cuomo’s signature blend of grunged-up power-pop, bursting with melodic hooks, sickly sweet and often glib but also pretty hard to resist.
Essentially, most of these tracks are meticulously crafted exercises in affectionate retro pastiche, like Steel Panther without the knob jokes. It makes perfect sense that The End Of The Game, an arena-sized anthem bristling with glammetal solos, was previously heard on the soundtrack to the third Bill And Ted movie. All The Good Ones marries We Will Rock You stomp to Bon Jovi-ish bombast, while Blue Dream pays melodic homage to Ozzy’s Crazy Train. The gushing, highschool metalhead romance I Need Some Of That even recycles passages from Blue Öyster Cult’s Reaper. It’s a smart party trick, although these arch allusions feel a little calculated and self-conscious at times, closer to bloodless simulations than heartfelt tributes.
When it moves beyond forensic 80s flashback mode, Van Weezer is less predictable and more promising. 1 More Hit is a sweetly self-aware meta-ditty that erupts into squalling thrash metal, Beginning Of The End is a slow-mo power ballad that swells into a mighty grungerock monster. Meanwhile, Sheila Can Do It is vintage Weezer power-pop, Beach Boys harmonies married to snarly Pixies blast, simple but effective.