Like everyone else with two ears and a heart, we have an undying affection for Weezer’s first two albums. Also, like everyone else with a smugly discerning taste in music, we’ve spent the last decade-plus clucking at everything Rivers Cuomo has churned out since. But that doesn’t mean that with every new Weezer album we don’t feel that tingle of possibility; could this, we ask, be the band we once knew? Weezer debuted two new songs at South Korea’s Jisan Valley Rock Festival in South Korea last week, and guess what — they’re not that good! “I’m Your Daddy” is definitely catchy, in a “Pork and Beans” kind of way, but it’s called “I’m Your Daddy”; “The Girl I Got Hot” is just kind of mid-tempo and boring, to the point where an always-dependable “woah-whoa-ho” chorus can’t do a thing. Both videos are still worthwhile, though, at least for a guitarless Rivers’s mike-stand dance moves.
