There’s some­thing about Weezer that I’ve never been able to put my fin­ger on. You never seem to meet any­one that doesn’t like them on some level, but at the same time I find myself hard pushed to think of any­one I know that could be con­sidered a “hard­core fan”. This seems to be the stigma asso­ci­ated with the ??????LA quar­tet, they have a selec­tion of songs which, it is fair to say are noth­ing less than anthemic, but the rest of their extens­ive dis­co­graphy, des­pite being just as catchy and easy to listen to; isn’t truly given the time of day.

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So what do we think of their latest album “The Red Album?” Well I bought it today and raced home, eagerly anti­cip­at­ing the kind of quirky hooks and infec­tious lyr­ics that pre­vi­ous Weezer albums had so gen­er­ously layered forth; and I have to say that I wasn’t dis­ap­poin­ted. The new album is a slice of Weezer her­it­age, mix­ing nod-along riffs and poppy drum beats with Rivers Cuomo’s trade­mark almost des­pond­ent indie-voice to cre­ate some­thing for new or cas­ual listen­ers to enjoy as well as those few die-hard fans that must lurk­ing in the ether somewhere.

How­ever there’s some­thing in the new album that just feels…funkier. It’s hard to tell at first, but as you listen on it becomes clear that “The red album” is made of some pretty upbeat stuff. As well as this, Weezer’s latest instal­ment boasts some­thing that few albums can these days; its fun to listen to. I listened to the album straight through and even on the first time there were moments that I simply had to smile. Not least Rivers’ dead­pan lyr­i­cism in “Every­body get dan­ger­ous” where he pro­claims “When I was younger, I used to go and tip cows for fun yeah/ actu­ally I didn’t do that, coz I didn’t want the cow to be sad/ but some of my friends did.” I also par­tic­u­larly enjoyed the R n’B-esque intro to “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” which seems to change tack more times than Bohemian Rhapsody.

Lyr­ic­ally speak­ing, Weezer pulls no punches, com­bin­ing self deprec­a­tion with mind­less arrog­ance (just listen to “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” and you’ll see what I mean) with enough pop cul­ture ref­er­ences to make the album remin­is­cent of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, a typ­ical example being the single “Pork and Beans” where Cuomo tips his cap, “Tim­ba­l­and knows the way to reach the top of the charts/Maybe if I work with him I can per­fect the art.”

Des­pite all this, I must say that I found the album a little bit dif­fi­cult at times. Although for the most part I enjoyed it hugely, and “Dreamin’” had me almost break­ing a plate through try­ing to dance and do the wash­ing up at the same time; there were the occa­sional moments where I lost interest, and had to force myself back into con­cen­trat­ing on the song I was listen­ing to, so that they all didn’t gel into one. I think the prob­lem was that I was look­ing for “that” song. The “My name is Jonas”. The “Keep Fish­ing” of the album. The”Hash Pipe” that I would simply stick on repeat and spend the rest of the day driv­ing the fam­ily insane by singing lines at ran­dom. For me at least, this song never seemed to arrive. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great album, but there just doesn’t seem to be that one defin­it­ive moment that will cement it’s place in the mind of the cas­ual listener, and I think, on some levels at least; this was a bit of a dis­ap­point­ment. Hav­ing said that, the bril­liance seems to be spread across the whole album, and in time I may be proved wrong, but even though noth­ing seemed to par­tic­u­larly leap out from the album, it didn’t neces­sar­ily detract from the qual­ity of the songs.

I’d hes­it­ate to call it Weezer at their best, but this is def­in­itely worth a listen.