WEEZER - Weezer (Teal Album) LP

Label: Crush Music

The Teal Album is a riot, the kind of latter-day throwaway turned fluke hit that Pearl Jam enjoyed when a 1998 sound-check recording of Wayne Cochran’s “Last Kiss” became the biggest chart hit of the band’s career. It doesn’t sound deeply considered; the track list reads like the repertoire of a band that works weddings and private events. Teal is a play on the idea of the washed-up rock star taking a swan dive into the nostalgia circuit.

Their forays into ’60s pop and classic rock have more of a unique Weezer stamp on. The Turtles’ ‘Happy Together’ is pumped into an emo epic, and Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ has Rivers rattling out the sort of convincingly stilted Ozzy impression. Then a final bout of R&B, you haven’t heard TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’ until you’ve heard it with a middle-eight of gnarly punk solos and sung by someone who’s only ever hung out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride to holler maths equations at anyone.

Respectful enough to rouse any struggling family gathering but knowing enough to amuse those in on the joke, ‘The Teal Album’ at once satirises the covers album and makes a decent stab at perfecting it.