NERD - No_One Ever Really Dies

The Guardian 80

(Columbia)
NERD’s comeback sounds very much like Williams’s show – and it’s brimming with killer tracks and star guests

Self-titling your fifth album sends a signal. The glad tidings are that No_One Ever Really Dies is not one of those rock fusions NERD have made in the past just to prove how versatile the production duo of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo (and their childhood friend Shae Haley) could be.

NERD are not only back, for the first time since 2010’s Nothing album, then, but relevant – political, even, in marked contrast to their slinkier incarnations. You get the impression that, however huge a hit Happy was for Williams, there was a desire for him to make some beats that could in no way soundtrack a children’s film. There is a strong Yolo bent, redolent of Pharrell’s Skateboard P days, to No_One Ever Really Dies. One track, Don’t Don’t Do It!, even breaks into something like ska. This is a brash, busy party record with its eyes wide open, in which the NERD brand is thoroughly refreshed.