Live Review: Weezer

The less said about the first half of the 'greatest hits' set from Weezer, probably the better. Let's just say Rivers Cuomo and his fearless team dress up some pretty cringeworthy material as best as they can, but there's only so much shine a turd will take. Cuomo gets amongst 8,000 of his people during Troublemaker (a nice distraction from the song), and for whatever reason the crowd goes apeshit for Beverly Hills, but it's not until we inch towards the '90s and cop a bit of Island In The Sun (what a fucking song!) that we hit paydirt and El Scorcho from Weezer's other good album, Pinkerton, is a glimmer of brightest gold.

The mid-set break is filled with a Weezer slideshow narrated by one of their good buddies, techs and classic dry bastard Karl Koch, who's been trotting the globe with the band for 20 years. Unlike your average family photo album, this stuff is actually good. There are plenty of awesome snaps of demos from Electric Lady Studios, the dudes with younger faces (except Cuomo, who hasn't aged an iota – apart from, strangely, his hands) and longer hair... You know the malarkey. Turns out they weren't ripping off The Feelies' Crazy Rhythms cover art on 'Blue', they were, in fact, like so much of their artistic output, ripping off The Beach Boys.

The best bit about reviewing a performance of an album as iconic as Weezer's 'Blue Album' is that you can switch off and let the thing wash over you. From the opening crashes of My Name Is Jonas to the closing drips of Only In Dreams, this is still an album to savour. Notably, Cuomo takes over on lead guitar for much of the 'Blue' stuff and his weird old-looking hands still shred. The World Has Turned And Left Me Here's timeless metronome is about as close to a perfect song as the band ever got – and it ain't far off. Buddy Holly and Say It Ain't So predictably rouse the collective larynx of the audience, but it's the aforementioned closer, surf song Holiday and the only-now-poignant-in-retrospect In The Garage that reveal the subtle brilliance of this album and band.