Catchy power pop tunes? Check!
Awkwardly sensitive and clever lyrics? Check!
Sounds like a good new Weezer album to me.
According to Weezer’s website, OK Human “is about feeling isolated, alienated and secluded… With all the chaos, [the band] decided to ditch the computers, go back to analog and enlisted the help of a 38-piece orchestra to make the record.”
With a career full of songs like “Undone (The Sweater Song),” “Perfect Situation,” and “Pork and Beans,” I’m not sure that themes of isolation can be described as new territory for Weezer, even in the context of a global pandemic. But using an orchestra is different and creates a warm listening experience.
For a rock record without electric guitars, the louder songs still rock and there are several great pop moments in the mold of mid-1960s classics like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Ruby Tuesday.” Fitting for an album partly recorded at Abbey Road studios, the first song has some “Penny Lane” flourishes. A later track on the record, “Here Comes the Rain,” sends us to George Harrison’s great song about making it through a “long, cold, lonely winter.” Overall, the album follows the pattern of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, with a move from simplicity to an older-but-wiser sensibility. These cultural touchstones add to the record’s friendliness without getting in the way of 21st-century stylings.
The album’s title is perfect, as it revisits Radiohead’s 1997 OK Computer. A generation after Radiohead imagined a computerized dystopia, technology has definitely reshaped our lives. It’s nice of Weezer to check in and ask how we’re doing: “Are you okay, fellow human?”
This theme gets off to a good start with “All My Favorite Songs,” instantly catchy with its sad-mad-bad rhyme scheme. This could seem lazy, except that it grounds the listener in basic emotions. In complicated times, it can be helpful to return to simple feelings like sadness and anger. Amid the various contradictions in and around us, the chorus of the song repeats: “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” and it feels okay to say so.
Each of the next three songs have power pop choruses that are just as direct, catchy, and honest about feeling alone. It’s easy to relate to the dull routines and social ambivalence of the wanderer of L.A. streets in “Aloo Gobi.” “Grapes of Wrath” is maybe the best rock song ever about a bookworm. It’s got a badass tune, with lyrics about a person who leaves the world behind through immersion in audiobooks. Then comes “Numbers,” a song about how we quantify and measure our lives in all kinds of unhelpful ways. Its melodic chorus about sadness and laughter leads into the inviting words “So call on me and tell me what you need.” These four opening songs are brilliant and remind me of how the first few tracks of Pet Sounds blend so perfectly into each other.
The next tunes become a little more meditative. “Playing My Piano” is the story of an unemployed husband/father who deals with rejection by playing music non-stop in the basement. Unrelated to that theme, this song has become a family favorite after my seven-year-old changed the chorus to “I’m playing my Nintendo! Ooh-ooh!”
The vibe continues with “Mirror Image,” which recalls the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” (another mid-60s classic) before it ends with spiritual lament: “Heaven turns his back on this man / Heaven shuts the door on this man.” It’s intriguing here that the gift of being known by another person can lead to feeling adrift in the cosmos, but I won’t dwell on it any more than this short song does.
In the video for “All My Favorite Songs,” people experience each other through screens. The ubiquity of our devices is again the theme of “Screens,” a funky tune that starts with lyrics about a teenage girl glued to her phone, a image so common that it’s almost a cliché. Showing that addiction to devices spans the generations, however, the second verse is about an older neighbor who spends the day playing solitaire on a desktop computer. The song ends with more signs of not feeling okay: “I miss my friends / I miss my family.” The unspoken good news here is that when we notice an absence in our lives, it turns out that communication tools like phones and social media can actually be used to create connections! Irony strikes again.
The next two songs keep the melancholy rolling. “Bird with a Broken Wing” suggests the midlife crisis of someone who used to feel like a hawk but has been grounded. On the positive side, this person still has a song to sing and sense of purpose in life. After it, though, comes “Dead Roses,” which leaves an unmistakably sad impression through unusually vague lyrics. What's this song about? Does the guy in “Playing My Piano” have regrets about his life choices? Is it about entering a basement level of grief, one that we usually avoid? Is it a musical piece of film noir or reference to a gothic novel I don't know? Given the album's emphasis on emotional honesty, it seems fair for me to conserve my own emotional energy by not caring enough to figure this one out.
A little instrumental piece provides an effective transition into the more up-tempo last two songs. “Here Comes the Rain” is unabashedly bright, with a rolling piano part that tells the story of how the rain is “gonna wash all my troubles away.” This song has another of the album’s best lines: “The universe will give you more / Of what you pay attention to.” That’s a great reminder that we really do have some control about the messages and values that fill our lives, a SoCal version of the Sermon on the Mount: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).
“Aloo Gobi” had the main character asking what it means to be human while wandering through Los Angeles. The final song is a time-traveling take on the same theme in the same place: a pre-historic protagonist gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits on the way home from hunting mastodon. Whether the Ice Age or the iPhone Age, people have always fallen into hard times and need friends to throw them a rope. As the last scene in the last song, it’s unfortunate that the person is stuck in the tar, but there’s still a chance that help is on the way. It provides an appropriately open-ended conclusion that inspires me to look for ways to lend a hand to folks who might feel stuck and to remember that it's okay to ask for help myself.
In conclusion, this album hits a lot of the right notes. Several of the songs are super catchy and encourage me to reflect on life’s hardships and blessings in uplifting ways. Will I enjoy listening to OK Human in a few years? It’s possible that these songs might remind me too much of the angst and challenges we're facing at the turn of this decade. But I have a hunch that this album will be worth coming back to. After all, if a lot of our favorite songs are slow and sad, it’s because they often have a unique power to name the demons, cast them out, and keep the music playing in our hearts. That’s a pretty okay place for a human to be.
Awkwardly sensitive and clever lyrics? Check!
Sounds like a good new Weezer album to me.
According to Weezer’s website, OK Human “is about feeling isolated, alienated and secluded… With all the chaos, [the band] decided to ditch the computers, go back to analog and enlisted the help of a 38-piece orchestra to make the record.”
With a career full of songs like “Undone (The Sweater Song),” “Perfect Situation,” and “Pork and Beans,” I’m not sure that themes of isolation can be described as new territory for Weezer, even in the context of a global pandemic. But using an orchestra is different and creates a warm listening experience.
For a rock record without electric guitars, the louder songs still rock and there are several great pop moments in the mold of mid-1960s classics like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Ruby Tuesday.” Fitting for an album partly recorded at Abbey Road studios, the first song has some “Penny Lane” flourishes. A later track on the record, “Here Comes the Rain,” sends us to George Harrison’s great song about making it through a “long, cold, lonely winter.” Overall, the album follows the pattern of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, with a move from simplicity to an older-but-wiser sensibility. These cultural touchstones add to the record’s friendliness without getting in the way of 21st-century stylings.
The album’s title is perfect, as it revisits Radiohead’s 1997 OK Computer. A generation after Radiohead imagined a computerized dystopia, technology has definitely reshaped our lives. It’s nice of Weezer to check in and ask how we’re doing: “Are you okay, fellow human?”
This theme gets off to a good start with “All My Favorite Songs,” instantly catchy with its sad-mad-bad rhyme scheme. This could seem lazy, except that it grounds the listener in basic emotions. In complicated times, it can be helpful to return to simple feelings like sadness and anger. Amid the various contradictions in and around us, the chorus of the song repeats: “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” and it feels okay to say so.
Each of the next three songs have power pop choruses that are just as direct, catchy, and honest about feeling alone. It’s easy to relate to the dull routines and social ambivalence of the wanderer of L.A. streets in “Aloo Gobi.” “Grapes of Wrath” is maybe the best rock song ever about a bookworm. It’s got a badass tune, with lyrics about a person who leaves the world behind through immersion in audiobooks. Then comes “Numbers,” a song about how we quantify and measure our lives in all kinds of unhelpful ways. Its melodic chorus about sadness and laughter leads into the inviting words “So call on me and tell me what you need.” These four opening songs are brilliant and remind me of how the first few tracks of Pet Sounds blend so perfectly into each other.
The next tunes become a little more meditative. “Playing My Piano” is the story of an unemployed husband/father who deals with rejection by playing music non-stop in the basement. Unrelated to that theme, this song has become a family favorite after my seven-year-old changed the chorus to “I’m playing my Nintendo! Ooh-ooh!”
The vibe continues with “Mirror Image,” which recalls the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” (another mid-60s classic) before it ends with spiritual lament: “Heaven turns his back on this man / Heaven shuts the door on this man.” It’s intriguing here that the gift of being known by another person can lead to feeling adrift in the cosmos, but I won’t dwell on it any more than this short song does.
In the video for “All My Favorite Songs,” people experience each other through screens. The ubiquity of our devices is again the theme of “Screens,” a funky tune that starts with lyrics about a teenage girl glued to her phone, a image so common that it’s almost a cliché. Showing that addiction to devices spans the generations, however, the second verse is about an older neighbor who spends the day playing solitaire on a desktop computer. The song ends with more signs of not feeling okay: “I miss my friends / I miss my family.” The unspoken good news here is that when we notice an absence in our lives, it turns out that communication tools like phones and social media can actually be used to create connections! Irony strikes again.
The next two songs keep the melancholy rolling. “Bird with a Broken Wing” suggests the midlife crisis of someone who used to feel like a hawk but has been grounded. On the positive side, this person still has a song to sing and sense of purpose in life. After it, though, comes “Dead Roses,” which leaves an unmistakably sad impression through unusually vague lyrics. What's this song about? Does the guy in “Playing My Piano” have regrets about his life choices? Is it about entering a basement level of grief, one that we usually avoid? Is it a musical piece of film noir or reference to a gothic novel I don't know? Given the album's emphasis on emotional honesty, it seems fair for me to conserve my own emotional energy by not caring enough to figure this one out.
A little instrumental piece provides an effective transition into the more up-tempo last two songs. “Here Comes the Rain” is unabashedly bright, with a rolling piano part that tells the story of how the rain is “gonna wash all my troubles away.” This song has another of the album’s best lines: “The universe will give you more / Of what you pay attention to.” That’s a great reminder that we really do have some control about the messages and values that fill our lives, a SoCal version of the Sermon on the Mount: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).
“Aloo Gobi” had the main character asking what it means to be human while wandering through Los Angeles. The final song is a time-traveling take on the same theme in the same place: a pre-historic protagonist gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits on the way home from hunting mastodon. Whether the Ice Age or the iPhone Age, people have always fallen into hard times and need friends to throw them a rope. As the last scene in the last song, it’s unfortunate that the person is stuck in the tar, but there’s still a chance that help is on the way. It provides an appropriately open-ended conclusion that inspires me to look for ways to lend a hand to folks who might feel stuck and to remember that it's okay to ask for help myself.
In conclusion, this album hits a lot of the right notes. Several of the songs are super catchy and encourage me to reflect on life’s hardships and blessings in uplifting ways. Will I enjoy listening to OK Human in a few years? It’s possible that these songs might remind me too much of the angst and challenges we're facing at the turn of this decade. But I have a hunch that this album will be worth coming back to. After all, if a lot of our favorite songs are slow and sad, it’s because they often have a unique power to name the demons, cast them out, and keep the music playing in our hearts. That’s a pretty okay place for a human to be.