Reflecting Pool - Weezer - Van Weezer

 Reflecting Pool - Weezer - Van Weezer

Weezer - Van Weezer - 2021

Go back and listen to Maladroit. Or Blue. Or Everything Will Be Alright. You know what you hear? Weezer rocks. Like, they really really rock. 

And that's the promise on the cover of Van Weezer. 

And they deliver. "Hero" is the metal meets Green Day I didn't know I needed. There's a bunch of bangers on this disc and I just wanna air shred to it. 

"I Need Some of That" is soaring chorus that gets to a place The Cars never could but is a tribute to Ocasek and it's sublime. 

Rivers is interpolating some of the best stuff out there, "Don't Fear the Reaper", "The Longest Time", "Heat of the Moment", "Crazy Train", "Girls, Girls, Girls" and the album is better for it as it acts like tribute not like a guy who ran out of ideas. 

I don't want to go to far down the rabbit hole. This is the second Weezer record in six months, they couldn't be more different and each are quite delicious in their own way. 

I want more of that lead up into the bridge to "1 More Hit". More! Please!

"Sheila Can Do It" proves what I've said before: Weezer wishes they were Cheap Trick. But a confessional one. 

A

ASide: The End of the Game, Hero

BlindSide; I Need Some of That, Blue Dream, Sheila Can Do It

Reflecting Pool - Weezer - OK Human

 Reflecting Pool - Weezer - OK Human

Weezer - OK Human - 2021

I wish I thought of it first but OK Human is a reaction to OK Computer. Sure, it's 20 years hence but I wish I had come up with it. I mean, I do love Radiohead but the way they distanced themselves from humanity as their career progressed should have been a warning sign to all of us of what was coming. 

Rivers and the boys have run the other way. Isolation seems to have done that to them. Ad Taylor Swift and well, everyone. 

"I tried to raise an eyebrow, it weighed too much" is the epitome of how we all feel during lockdown. I was never really isolated. Instead, I had a wife and kids and life was, well, great. I actually had people overload. As I'm sure some other families felt. It wasn't until I had to leave the country for work and, because we'd rather shoot everything in one go, I signed up for 2 months in an apartment by myself. 

The first 2 weeks was full isolation. I did it. But it was really lonely. I couldn't bring myself to read emails even though I had all day to do any kind of work. It was monotony. But I was determined, I would cook for myself and, when I could leave I would bike all over Vancouver. 

It took 3 weeks for me to text to my brother: "Ok. Three weeks is the amount of time it took from me, living alone, to go from, “I shall cook healthy meals” to “dinner is an overcooked piece of pork and ice cream”.

This album is unlike the excesses of the prior ones while filling itself with all sorts of instrumentation. "Grapes of Wrath" is about reading a book, for fuck's sake. "Playing My Piano" is like something you hear on The Beatles White Album. At that point (at many points) The Beatles were amusing themselves, right?That's what Rivers is doing. During a quarantine. 

This is Weezer’s version of either the Beatles White Album or what John Lennon would have written had he the time.

By 2021 Rivers Cuomo had been writing and producing music for 27 years. Think about that. The Rolling Stones began in 1963. By 1990 they had nothing to offer. Who else is still trying at that point? And that's what he's writing about in "Bird with a Broken Wing". His own irrelevancy. Wow. 

A-

A Side: All My Favorite Songs, Screens

Blind Side: Grapes of Wrath, Bird With a Broken Wing, Here Comes the Rain

Reflecting Pool - Weezer - Everything Will Be Alright in the End

 Reflecting Pool - Weezer - Everything Will Be Alright in the End

Weezer - Everything Will Be Alright in the End - 2014

Weezer is back on this record with a vengeance and a handful of self loathing but not too much. 

I’m glad I took a while to give this a write up since I never understood what “Maybe P:at should play the drums” meant until I recently learned that Rivers allowed Pat Wilson to take on lead guitar chores while he concentrated on being the front man. 

“Back to the Shack” is yet another song in the “I went too far doing something else and I need to get back to what works that Rivers started with Pinkerton’s “The Good Life”.

But it’s been years in the wilderness which includes co-writers and letting band mates take over…some weird stuff out there.

Here they are, back with Ric Ocasek after losing their record deal and putting out the surprisingly good Hurley on Epitaph. This is a one off for Republic and, dammit, I really wish it was an eponymous record cuz it FEELS like Green. 

I can only believe that “Eulogy for a Rock Band” has to be about Weezer, despite the fact that it’s been 20 years and not 15. 

Yes, Rivers is co-writing here, sort of suggesting that, while he’s a pretty good songsmith, he really needed Cropper or Sharpe to flesh out his ideas. 

What I find myself wishing is that Rivers was a songwriter who wrote stuff that other people wanted to play but his songs are SO Cuomo-centric that it’s impossible to imagine anyone else recording them. 

And yet, songs like “Go Away” with Bethany Cosentino are spectacular and perfect for Best Coast.

Knowing that Rivers has a daughter and his relationship with his father and step-father weren’t the best…”Foolish Father” is a masterstroke of confessional Weezering. And knowing that “Everything Will Be Alright in the End” brings a tear to this father’s eye. 

U2 has three distinct lives, broken up by sets of releases. I wonder if Weezer has the same. Because they could have ended everything here and been just fine. 

I guess I’ll have to finish this and revisit some others to figure that out. 

Grade: A

A Side: Back to the Shack, Eulogy for a Rock Band, Da Vinci, Cleopatra

BlindSide: I’ve Had it Up to Here, The British Are Coming, Go Away, Foolish Father, The Futurescope Trilogy Pt. III: Anonymous