Weezer – Pork And Beans

• 16th Jul 2008

To the uninitiated, Weezer will always be the band that wrote ‘Buddy Holly’, the song that featured a video that sent up ‘Happy Days’ and which was included with Windows. Cue people playing the video endlessly, marvelling that where once had been a ZX Spectrum was now a beige box that could play moving images from a CD.

The band of course have moved on; this pleasing effort is a strong song in the tradition of counter-culture American indie, staunchly declaiming that they’ll eat their ‘candy/with the pork and beans’. They name check Timbaland and moot a possible collaboration in order to get to the ‘top of charts’. I’m sure it’s co-incidental but the twangy slap of the guitar riff isn’t a million miles from the serrated hip-pop of Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’. A crunchy fuzzed up chorus with a squealing lead is exactly what they deadpan before the Timbaland line: ‘everyone likes to dance to happy song/ with a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along.’ So are they having their cake and eating it?