Weezer’s Revenge of the Former Nerds

If the age of irony has indeed ended, somebody better tell Rivers Cuomo. Leading his band Weezer in concert at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater on Friday, the singer was all shtick, a self-impressed rock demigod with an unending spool of smooth talk for the fans.

This wouldn’t be at all ironic for a lot of bands, but Cuomo and Weezer have based their career on being the 98-pound weaklings of pop. Arriving in the mid-’90s, they looked like the high school chess club and sang impossibly catchy songs about getting beat up, shut out and cast aside.

When they played the Hollywood Palladium last year, returning to the wars after a long hiatus, Cuomo lived up to his reputation as neurotic eccentric, an owl-like figure bundled in a down vest.

Behold the twerp transfigured.

Weezer’s rebound was a resounding success, and Rivers sauntered onto the Irvine stage Friday in suit and tie and tinted shades, evoking one of the outsider’s archetypes, legendary record producer Phil Spector. He went on to establish a mocking/rocking dynamic that would run the show.

For every triumphant gem of bristling, hook-festooned, melodious pop-rock, from the early anthem “Buddy Holly” to the comeback hits “Hash Pipe” and “Island in the Sun,” there was a Rivers routine. “Fifteen thousand people, the biggest Weezer show ever!” he crowed.

It culminated in teenage KISS fan’s wish fulfillment, with drummer Pat Wilson’s platform 30 feet in the air, a huge, light-bulb-packed “W” symbol beaming at the crowd, and Cuomo comically stabbing the air with his scrawny arms.

All this jive did counterbalance the songs’ frequently scathing and caustic characterizations, which Rivers delivered with conviction.

It was quite the night for outsiders. Chris Carrabba, who preceded Weezer with his band Dashboard Confessional, introduced “Screaming Infidelities” by saying, “This song’s on the radio--we’re sorry.” Someone like Carrabba has to worry at a time when popularity is viewed with suspicion, but he’ll have to cope--he’s become a grass-roots sensation recently, and Friday he made an impression on an audience that wasn’t all his.

There’s a lot of Morrissey in the Florida-based singer’s acoustic-rooted, singsongy tales of deception and desperation, but in his case the angst stays confined to the song.