My Top Ten Albums of 2016 - Number 2

2. Weezer - Weezer (The White Album)

Weezer are a band who have long existed on the outskirts of my collection but never really stepped centre stage. I enjoyed their 1994 debut album, particularly their big hit Buddy Holly and slacker anthems like Undone - The Sweater Song and In The Garage. Since then I've dipped my toe into their pool occasionally but not given them as much time as I have their contemporaries like Fountains of Wayne or even The Dandy Warhols. Then, just over a year ago I picked up their 2014 "second comeback" album Everything Will Be Alright In The End and found myself hooked. I started filling in the holes in my collection and became extremely stoked for their next record (not literally called The White Album; it's actually eponymous, like the Blue, Red & Green albums before it, and only differentiated from its predecessors by the colour of its sleeve) especially when I heard the hilarious pre-release gem Thank God For Girls... surely one of the best power pop singles of the 21st Century.

I'm so glad I got a girl to think of even though she isn't mine
I think about her all the day and all the night it's enough to know that she's alive
She says I give her sweaty palms she almost had a heart attack
The truth is that I’m just as scared I don’t know how to act
I wish that I could get to know her better
But meeting up in real life would cause the illusion to shatter
I carved her name into all the trees
Sang a song down on one knee
Looking at the underwear page of the Sears catalog like when I was 14
I’m levitating like a magnet turned the wrong way around
I’m like an Indian Fakir tryna’ meditate on a bed of nails with my pants pulled down
Thank God for girls
Holla Jesu Christe
From Tennessee to LA

The rest of the album was going to have to go some to match that, but they just about pulled it off. Described as both a "beach" album and a concept album about a geek finding love and then having his heart ripped to shreds... well, despite that, it's still the most upbeat, positive, sing-along-till-your-heart-bursts record of the year.Which, given everything else that's happened this year, might go some way towards explaining why I place it at #2.



Next: my favourite album of the year. A prize to anyone who can guess what it might be.