Music Reviews

This one’s a quickie.

Another instalment in the ongoing Weezer „SZNZ“ series is here, so the question has to be asked, is it an improvement over the previous two? Well we’re here to find out.

So the record kicks off with „Can’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me“ a painfully generic but overall fun song that already sounds miles better than whatever was going on on the summer album – still though, the electronics are really obnoxious as is the chorus, also the ending is super abrupt and awkward it just ends like in the middle of the chorus, it’s a really weird choice, but yeah, overall it’s solid. The next song „Get Off On The Pain“ is an enygma – the intro sounds super promising, like the heavy driving guitars sound super good and I love the energy of the track up to that point but once we get to the chorus the song literally just turns into a completely different songs, the two segments just don’t mash together at ALL. The pacing of this song is just completely ruined because of this even though the 2 segments sound good on their own but together they just don’t work in the slightest. Anyways „What Happens After You?“ is a potentially alright song, like nothing mind blowing and a bit cheezy but overall passable but once again, the chorus here not only makes it one of the worst songs on this album and this whole series, the OoOOoooOoOOos are SUPER annoying and ruin a completely okay song. After that we have the song „Francesca“ which yeah sure, it’s generic, it’s melodramatic and yes a bit under-written, however the small part before the chorus where RIvers sings a bit faster, just something about the was he sings that works really well and honestly compared to some of the choruses here so far this one’s not so bad you know. If it wasn’t for some awkward choices (like the obviously thrown in synths that sound super forced and out of place or the last part of the last chorus which makes my ears bleed) this would have been of the best songs of the whole series but as is it’s just alright. „Should She Stay Or Should She Go“ is just a ruined Beatles song, I legit fell I’ve heard this exact song a milion times before a milion times better, super boring and forgetable, moving on. „Tastes Like Pain“ is funny since up to this point this 2 minute interlude unironically sounds better than literally all the full songs here and I’m just gonna let that speak for itself. However I do have to say, the closer „Run, Raven, Run“ I actually enjoy quite a bit – it’s a bit goofy overall but really heartfelt and it’s probably the most solid tune on the album – the switch up in the middle of the song works super well and the build up back to the chorus is very climactic and rewarding, I gotta say probably my favorite song on the whole album, extraordinarily well made closer, just wish the rest of the songs lived up to it.

And there you go, that’s „Autumn“, to the surprise of no-one another mixbag in this SZNZ series – funniest thing about this one is probably the fact that they just completely gave up at least trying to sound like the season they are trying to portray, like this one sounds literally more like summer than the summer one. Still probably the best installment overall so far, not really a compliment though.

-favorite tracks: Can’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me; parts of Francesca; Tastes Like Pain; Run, Raven, Run

-least favorite tracks: What Happens After You?; Should She Stay Or Should She Go

Strong 5/10