Weezer | ‘Hurley’ Is Better Than ‘Raditude’

For three years in a row now, the L.A. based band Weezer has released a full length LP, ‘The Red Album’ in 08’, ‘Raditude’ in 09’ and the newest of which ‘Hurley’, dropped on September 14^th.  Whenever you have albums that come out in such rapid succession it makes you question the value of the music being produced. How good could this music really be? Well if we wanted to make a power ranking out of just the three latest albums it would start with ‘The Red Album’ followed by ‘Hurley’ and bringing up the rear in a distant, distant third would be ‘Raditude’.

The new album ‘Hurley’ that features a photo of ‘Lost’ star Jorge Garcia who played the character Hurley. It was an interesting choice for Weezer to use just a photo of the big man as the cover art for ‘Hurley’.  No graphics, no words, just a face shot of a grinning Garcia who is instantly recognizable as his famous character Hurley.  ‘Hurley’ (the album not the character) has a much more familiar tone to it than last years ‘Raditude’. The new album has more of that pop rock attitude that we saw with ‘The Red Album’ with playful lyrics and fast paced guitar progressions.  River Cuomo the lead singer of Weezer had a lot of help on this album when it came to writing the songs. Artists like Dan Wilson, Greg Wells and Ryan Adams share some of the credit for ‘Hurley’ and if you listen to “Run Away” the track which Ryan Adams had a hand in you almost think that you are listening to The Cardinals.

Whenever you get right down to it, ‘Hurley’ is a solid album, its not the best Weezer has ever done but it is not the worst either. ‘Hurley’ is a major move back to where Weezer was before they made ‘Raditude’ and that is not a bad thing at all.