Weezer in Brisbane: Dance, monkeys
I went to see Weezer on Sunday night for the first gig of their Australian tour, which is both their first time touring here in 16 (!) years and also part of one of those retromania shows where a band plays a whole album in full and I had never been to one of those before but now I have and I had some thoughts on that and now you can read them in my review.
Wanting to see a band play one of their old, beloved albums from start to finish is an odd thing. You have to love the band enough to sit through that, but also not trust them enough to let them pick their own setlist. Weezer are perfect for this. The gap between their classic best and their recent worst is unprecedented; it’s hard to think of another band whose peak and trough are so pronounced. The Blue Album is justly considered one of the best rock albums of the 1990s, but who wants to sit through a bunch of songs off Hurley just so you can hear them play ‘Say It Ain’t So’? With any other band it’d feel awkward to turn the crank and make them into our dancing monkeys for a night, but not Weezer.
