For those over thirty, read this section of the review:

Weezer’s new album, their first for Epitaph records, is like two sweet middle-aged people getting married in the final chapter of a Nicholas Sparks album. Epitaph, the snot nosed obnoxo-core record label that made it’s name in the early 1990s with bands like Offspring, NOFX and Rancid has found the perfect match in this album from Weezer, a return to everything you love about them pre-The Green Album.

For those of you under thirty, please read this section:

Weezer, that band with that “Island in the Sun” song has made an album talking about what it’s like to be old when the only thing you have to look forward to is nostalgia. Oh, but there’s an anthem here for nerdy girls called “Smart Girls” which is basically Buck Cherry’s “Crazy Bitch” for the Tumblr set.

Though a return to the earlier Pinkerton type emotive, poppy, jump around punk, Hurley is not without its own production decision missteps. For every strong song like the first single, “Memories”, a paean to the earlier years of the band which features some clever lyrics such as “When Audioslave was still Rage”, there is an odd track such as “Hang On” filled with all of the strange “wide screen” production flourishes like those that made Against Me!’s New Wave such a disappointment.

These extraneous elements find their way to “Unspoken” in the form of a flute backing the acoustic guitar phrases, and “Trainwrecks” in a Pet Shop Boys-like synth pad intro. Though there are times when these embellishments do add to the songs such as “Time Flies” and “Run Away” yet even there it sounds like they had extra money so why not continue to tinker with tracks to show “Hey we used the production budget!”

A lot has been made about the “grown up” sound of this album, but you’d be better off examining this as more of a mid-life crisis; an album designed to be wistful and bank on the previous experiences the audience had with Weezer than on trying to push forward. Though if Hurley prevents another Raditude, I’m all for it.