Weezer and
Green Day may be among the most successful punk-pop veterans of the 2000s, but
Nerf Herder deserve their own set of accolades for soldiering into their second decade with the band's original lineup intact. For better or worse,
Nerf Herder's musical formula also remains the same, and
IV offers a snarky selection of tracks about garage sales, golf shirts, and Led Zeppelin. Returning fans will enjoy this familiar mix of tongue-in-cheek wordplay and power-trio punk pummeling, even if
IV's loyalty to a dwindling genre might rub other listeners the wrong way. While
Green Day reinvented themselves into contemporary chart-toppers with
American Idiot,
Nerf Herder remain indebted to the irreverent sounds of '90s rock, and the absence of 21st century indicators (such as "Jenna Bush Army," which firmly rooted the band in the Dubya era on 2002's
American Cheese) only heightens the illusion that
IV could very well be a mid-'90s record. There's not much to separate this from
Weezer's
Blue Album or
the Presidents of the United States of America's 1995 debut, apart from
IV's crisp production and
Nerf Herder's willingness to embellish their sound with Farfisa organs ("Manatee"), synths ("Oh Me, Oh My"), and Wurlitzer-aping keyboards ("High School Reunion"). Comparisons to
Weezer and
the Presidents aren't necessarily negative, however, particularly for a mischievous band whose idea of unrequited love (as detailed during "Garage Sale") is the discovery that their ex-girlfriends have been re-selling their old gifts for heartbreakingly low prices. ~ Andrew Leahey