Monthly Archives: August 2025

#1319: Weezer – Surf Wax America

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I’m doing this thing lately where I’m dating my posts. Don’t worry, from the next one on, you’ll be able to carry on reading without realizing I’m writing these two months in advance of their scheduled dates. But it’s important to note, for this particular track too, that this is written the day after the man, the legend, the genius, Brian Wilson – the brains behind the Beach Boys – passed away at the age of 82. I let out an unrestrained “What?!” when I saw the message panning at the bottom of the TV screen on Sky News. Luckily, it was just me in the house, so I felt free in doing so. I mean, what more can you say? So much great music written by this one man. He’ll live on forever through it. And the influence… I feel like the whole “songs about California” thing we see today was started by Wilson and the Beach Boys. And there would be so many tracks from the past 30 years that would have gone in a totally different direction had it not been for his work.

And that leads me in to the subject of today’s post. Weezer’s ‘Surf Wax America’, the sixth track on the band’s 1994 self-titled debut, better known by you and me as the Blue Album. When I got that album in 2006 and liked it instantaneously that I started reading up around it online, one of the things that was always made clear was how the vocal breakdown in ‘Surf Wax…’ was inspired by the Beach Boys. And in ‘Holiday’ too. “Guess it’s some old band,” 11-year old me probably thought. Wouldn’t be years until I listened to the Beach Boys. All I knew was I had this great album where every song was a straight-up 10 outta 10. The guitars were crunchin’, the melodies and vocal harmonies were memorable, the performances powerful. A very solid alternative rock album if ever there was one. All the better experienced with a good speaker system, like I had with my first listen, thanks to a setup my uncle did to go with the old Windows XP computer.

The track begins the second half of the album, coming as a big pick-me-up after previous track ‘Undone’ ends with an interlude of strange piano swoops and tinkling keys. Drummer Pat Wilson came up with the riff that begins the song, hence his songwriting credit, and on top Rivers Cuomo sings about all the conventional people driving their cars to their office jobs while he prefers to surf. The song’s a great one, all about wanting to be free and breaking away from the rat race of society. Though Cuomo has also said that the whole thing’s meant to be totally sarcastic and not meant to be taken seriously. He doesn’t even surf. What’s up with that? Well, he could have fooled me. The way the whole track’s delivered, the gusto in Cuomo’s vocal, the copious amounts of energy provided in all the instruments… Sounds to me like this couldn’t be done by a band who wasn’t being anything but sincere in the music. All I know is I have a great time listening to it. I don’t know if people have it as a favourite on the album when it’s next to others like ‘Buddy Holly’, ‘Say It Ain’t So’ or ‘Jonas’. But it’s all right with me.

#1318: Oasis – Supersonic

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I write this post at a point in time when the first Oasis reunion show is just over three weeks away. But today, they would have been going on for almost a month. I hope the Gallagher brothers (and Bonehead) have been going strongly. I wasn’t spending countless hours in online queues when the reunion announcement was made last year. I like Oasis, but not that greatly. The only album of the band’s I’ve listened through is …Morning Glory. Definitely Maybe is considered to be the best of the best by the group. Noel Gallagher thinks of it that way. I’ve never had the urge to check it out. What I definitely know about Oasis is that they usually never let you down when it came to their singles. Their music videos were on the TV all the time. And a lot of them I liked. So when the Stop the Clocks compilation came around in November ’06, I knew I had to get my hands on it somehow.

I have a vivid memory of seeing ‘Supersonic’ one day on the small screen, and just immediately getting what it was about just from blend of music and visuals. I might have even had Stop the Clocks at the time of watching and had completely ignored the song. But if I didn’t know it by then, I definitely knew it now. I think the song is one of Oasis’s best, even if the song is about nothing at all, as Noel Gallagher as admitted on several occasions, and was written in about half an hour because the band needed a song to be the band’s first official single, after ‘Bring It on Down’ was passed over. And what a tune. Liam Gallagher’s vocal is A-class, top notch. Doesn’t yet have that rasp that would make itself known as albums went by, but it’s still got that youthful power that makes it incredibly infectious. The song has a bit of a groove to it, I feel. If I find myself nodding my head to a song’s motion, which I do in this one’s case, it’s fair to say there’s a groove about. A solid wall of barre-chord guitars, lead guitar licks here and there. What more could you ask for?

I’m not sure what else I can comment on, really. ‘Supersonic’ is a super solid number. What’s Noel Gallagher writing about? A girl called Elsa who’s into Alka Seltzer. Doing it with doctors on helicopters. Riding in BMWs, sailing in yellow submarines. A whole lot of nonsense. But in between, you’ll have the coolest phrases like, “You/I need to be your/myself, you/I can’t be no one else.” And “You need to find a way for what you want to say / But before tomorrow.” Those are some short, snappy life lessons in there. Noel Gallagher was really good at somehow throwing in some very relatable things among the unusual. That was really his bread and butter, the formula that made those first two albums (and Be Here Now to an extent) so captivating. And Liam Gallagher sang them like no one else could. Thirty years on, I’m not expecting things to be quite the same. But I could be wrong, though. There’s still time. I’ll need you guys from the future to tell me how those Oasis gigs are going.