I think Weezer called this album Hurley, because only Hurley would call it a good Weezer album. Yes Hurley, the fictional character from the TV show "Lost," not to be confused with Jorge Garcia the actor who's gigantic face fills up the entire cover of the album.Hurley's plane crashed on the "Lost island" in September of 2004; that means the last Weezer album he listened to was Maladroit (2002); therefore, he crashed thinking that there was only one truely terrible Weezer album. Later, Hurley returned stateside in 2005 as one of the "Oceanic Six" and stayed in a mental hospital until 2007. It's possible that he heard the awful album Make Believe (2005) in that time, but it's unlikely. Hurley returned to the island in 2007 and probably was there until he died. Therefore, if Hurley actually found a way to hear the album Hurley, he would probably would think it is a good Weezer album, based solely on what he has actually heard from Weezer in his life. Hurley almost completely missed Weezer's decline in the past five years into some kind of weird pop-culture theme-song band. So he probably would be okay with this new upbeat Weezer album with his face on it that he somehow came across.
Weezer are in their forties and still sing about teenage angst, there are lots of lyrics like "us boys going crazy for you," and "I'm going to be more than a friend." I guess Rivers Cuomo went full circle to cool again because his big glasses look hipster. But it seems like Weezer is more about publicity stunts than rocking out. They do bad covers of 2005 songs because they can. They hang out with the Jackass dudes because they can. They dance around with internet memes, muppets and the Auto-tune the news people because they can. What they can't seem to do is evolve as a band, and produce anything that doesn't sound like they are trying to sound like Weezer used to sound.
There's a couple of catchy chant-able songs as usual, but way too many annoying ones. I thought "Smart Girls" was the worst song ever made, until I realized that it was sung in the perspective of a deaf post-lobodomy patient.
...and I know Weezer is into remaking songs these days, but remaking "Memories" by Barbra Streisand? Weird...
