Album: Weezer, Hurley (Epitaph)

Last year's Raditude garnered the weakest acclaim and sales of Weezer's career, and presaged their departure from Geffen.

But a shift to a new label sparks a return to form, with Hurley (named after cover star Jorge Garcia's character from Lost) recalling the drolly self-deprecating power-pop of their earliest albums. Rivers Cuomo all but admits as much in the single "Memories", a chugging celebration of a period when they "didn't know what we were doing half the time". They still represent the smart, ironic underbelly of American indie, with simple, catchy riffs underpinning jokey songs celebrating their incompetence, like "Trainwrecks"; offer a nerd's awed confusion when faced with "Smart Girls"; and ruminate amusingly on sexuality by simply replacing the word "socks" with "sex" in the search-song "Where's My Sex?".

DOWNLOAD THIS Memories; Smart Girls; Where's My Sex?