Weezer - LA Girlz

Sure, it’s only February, but already, Weezer’s self-titled ‘White’ album is shaping up to be one of the year’s best. ‘LA Girlz’, with its blatant disregard for spelling, follows the majestic ‘Do You Wanna Get High?’ as a culmination of everything there is to love about the band. Chord changes, time signatures, melodies – that point where Rivers Cuomo’s already pretty vunerable vocal threatens to self-destruct; even if a San Fran boffin programmed a computer to construct the perfect Weezer track they’d never beat this. Because while it harks back to those supposed ‘glory days’ the most chin-stroking of fans hold so dear, it also finds the band falling in perfectly to the current wave of rock-goes-pop. See, when Weezer returned in the early 00s, having deviated from the slacker rock niche they’d emerged from in the mid-90s, their polished bombast was derided. This year, their US touring partners Panic! At The Disco are topping charts worldwide with what on paper appears to be the same philosophies.But let’s not look too deeply; this isn’t a thesis, it’s a song. And a great one at that.