Spring has officially sprung, and Weezer marked the occasion with a whimsical, fantasy-filled rendition of the group’s new single “A Little Bit of Love” on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The band transformed the late-night show’s stage into a fanciful forest, complete with a creepy mandolin-playing rabbit and frontman Rivers Cuomo sporting a pair of pointy elf ears.
Contrary to the sad sack nerd rock that propelled Weezer to fame in the early 90s, “A Little Bit of Love” is a blithe and uplifting ambling rock number, jam-packed with inspirational aphorisms. “Take a look at where you started from/And where you are today/You climbed mountains, swam oceans/You got knocked down and kept goin’,” Cuomo sings in the song’s chorus. “In the end you know you’ve got to say/A little bit of love goes a pretty long way.”
The track is featured on the band’s latest release, SZNZ: Spring — which Rolling Stone called “suitably lighthearted right through the closing track” — marking the first of four seasonally inspired EPs scheduled to arrive from Cuomo and Co. this year. Each release also features an interpolation of a movement from Vivaldi’s famed violin concertos, The Four Seasons.
“Spring is kind of like happy chill,” Cuomo said of the SZNZ project last year. “And then we move through to dance rock, like a Strokes-style album for the fall, and then sad acoustic, Elliott Smith-style for winter.”