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