Music Reviews

Now here it is, brand new year and a brand new album from the infamous band Weezer, which I have very… Mixed feeling about, or at least I had before going into this album. Essentially at first I just found the band to be generic uninspired run of the mill rock music, for people who have never in their live even talked to a girl. But I think I finally got Weezer’s appeal with this album and it even allowed me to look back on some of their older material and appricate the band’s sound a little bit more. But the ultimate question we’re all asking, is this new album over here any good?

And right off the back I have a simple answer to that question – yes, that is very much the case here. It isn’t anything ground-breaking or never done before, but it is just a damn solid rock album with a giant orchestral twist through the whole album this time around. This causes the sound of this thing to be incredibly easy-going, larger then life and most of all human, as the title souggets. It also makes for some of the most beautiful and gut-punching moments in the band’s entire catalog, like the song „Mirror Image“, which could be essentialy discredited as an interlude, but the giant walls of strings and the heart- wrenching lyrics legitemately are enough to make me cry – my only complaint about this track is, that I just wished it was longer honestly. Then we also have the single released prior to the album „All My Favorite Songs“, which was the first indicator of the sound the band would be taking with this new project and it was honestly a perfect choice for the first single – the instant catchiness and easy-goingness contrast really well with River’s passionate vocals and it just makes for a fitting opener. Then we get the song „Aloo Gobi“, which runs pretty similarly to the last track with more emphasis on the strings this time. The chorus is also very passionately sung and the „You are not alone“ bridge really makes the song feel like an completely expirience of a song by the end of it. Some other stand-out track include the beautiful „Numbers“ with some insanely beautiful vocal lines from River on the chorus, honestly a contender for one of my favorites on here. The mysterious „Playing My Piano“ is surprisingly enough centred around a piano line that hits around the chorus, which really gives the song a sense of mystery and wonder, it’s a really nice touch, even though the lyrics on this one aren’t as mind-blowing on the first verse. „Screens“ is another quick one, that has more guitar incorporation in it and it honestly just feels kind of repetetive by this point in the album, not a bad track, though there isn’t much else to be said about it. The following „Bird With a Broken Wing“ fortunately picks things up a bit and is actually one of the emotional high-points on this album, realy just a goergous track through and through. „Here Comes The Rain“, as the title suggests, is an obvious The Beattles tribute and a very well done one at that – it also serves as a very much needed positive break point on the album, considering much of the album is otherwise kind of moody and dreamy. The track has this very sunshine-like energy to it with these instant catchy piano chords, that then smoothly lead into the orchestral instrumentation that finnishes the track off. The closer „La Brea Tar Pits“ is like a more grand version of Aloo Gobi, not only with the weird name incorporation again, but with the overall tone of the song, they really feel like two parts of the same song and it manages to close of the album fairly well.

So yeah, I actually enjoyed a Weezer album in 2021, crazy times we live in, right? No, but now for real, I really see this as an accoplishment in the band’s catalog and the band themselves should also see this as something to be very proud of. I can see how this may come off as sort of boring to some people, as this is the criticism I encountered most of the times doing my research for this album, but to me, that very much isn’t the case – just listen to the music, pay attention to what is being said and let the overall vibe of this album consume you, then you’ll get what I mean.

light 8/10