"I had a funky night and my brain needs a break"
Weezer, 2019
Introduction
As a teen and young adult in the 90s--I turned 13 in 1990--I always liked how Weezer blended favorite elements of the white guy soundscape: post-Nirvana power-pop nerd rock.
I became more than casually interested in Weezer in 2005, when "Make Believe" came out. It intrigued me that a 90s band was still putting out an ambitious-sounding album. I was starting a solo road trip driving my parent's little Toyota Echo from my hometown of Walla Walla, Washington to Toledo, Ohio, where it would become my family's first second car. I bought "Make Believe" on its release day at Hot Poop (Walla Walla's only bing bang stereo shop), headed east into the Rockies, and listened to Weezer sing about feelings, regrets, hopes and fears for hours on end as I navigated a 4-cylinder compact car through a springtime blizzard that accompanied me all the way from Missoula to Bismarck.
Since then, I've made a point of keeping up with Weezer's new stuff. I'm not one who thinks that Weezer or singer/songwriter Rivers Cuomo is genius. Instead, Weezer has become a friend to go through the years with.
Song-by-Song Review
I'm a teacher, so I'll say that if Weezer turned in the Black Album to me in class, I'd give it a solid A-. The main knock on it would be the lack of a big single, but that's a small thing. From beginning to end, it's full of quality power pop, produced in a way that sounds contemporary, without the production getting in the way of the songs. The lyrics are intriguing, occasionally provocative, and sometimes even poetic. The repeated line "She cut me like a piece of cake" is one the best lyrics I've ever heard, and I have hardly any idea what it means.
The opening track, "Can't Knock the Hustle," takes on today's gig economy, from the perspective of someone who has no alternative but to trust their own ability to be a creator and influencer. It sounds like conversations we're all having about being stretched thin from trying to make it. Because I listen to Weezer with my three kids, I'm not crazy about the swears here and elsewhere in the album. But under the rubric of hanging with friends, I have to admit that I swear in front of the kids, too. That's just where we are these days.
"Zombie Bastards" might literally be a song about watching TV or playing Plants vs Zombies. But in the current moment, I also hear it as a commitment to fight mindlessness and to resist the idiotic nonsense that dominates public life these days. Plus, it has a bouncy tune.
A similar question of literal interpretation makes "High as a Kite" surprisingly fascinating. Is it a song about parasailing, as the first line suggests? Is it barely more metaphorically about doing drugs? Could be. Regardless, the straight-up longing for peace and safety is beautiful: "I'm high as a kite / don't you think they'd know what I'm worth / flying like a beautiful bird." This song has convinced me that it's not just a cheesy or ironic power ballad; it's a genuine question of how to claim the worth and peace everyone deserves on a very basic level.
"Living in L.A." adds to the significant number of Weezer songs about Southern California, which would get annoying, except that every time I go to SoCal I can't help but admit that it has a special kind of awesomeness. This song mixes that west coast magic with romantic angst by being a song about a lonely guy in a big city.
As mentioned above, "Piece of Cake" has one of the best choruses ever, sung to a great melody. Like "Living in L.A.," it's another song about a lonely guy, which would be cliche if weren't so real. Part of what I've started to appreciate as an adult who still listens to pop songs about broken hearts is that most men are not raised to develop emotional intelligence. In general, men have a hard time talking about feelings, admitting that we have emotional needs, and letting our guard down about hurts and fears. And so these feelings come out sideways in our lives as tough-guy nonsense. I like how Weezer frequently tackles these emotional shortcomings. Songs like "Piece of Cake" invite sitting with uncomfortable feelings to start the process of owning them.
If men are bad at dealing with feelings in "Piece of Cake," then "I'm Just Being Honest" tackles emotional challenges from a different angle. There's a fine line between being honest and being an insensitive jerk. That's the theme of this confessional power pop nugget, which would have fit nicely on "Make Believe" or the Red Album. The same goes with the next song, "Too Many Thoughts in My Head," which could seem like it doesn't add much, except for how personal it gets in the bridge:
I never wanted to be lonely
I never thought that life would turn out like this
I never thought that I'd feel empty
I'm really tired of this Lawrence Welk shit
What is the Lawrence Welk shit? I don't know exactly, but this song adds mounting evidence to the diagnosis of a common disease of our time: being surrounded by noise and limitless possibility, while feeling empty in the middle of it all.
"The Prince Who Wanted Everything" seems to re-imagine the life of the late great Prince as a riches to rags story, which is kind of true. More broadly, the song presents the tragedy that great art doesn't often get the chance to make the positive difference that it should or could. The next song, "Byzantine," starts with lines about another rocker, this time Neil Young. The singer says he wants to hear Neil Young through his girlfriend's smartphone speakers, which is "how his songs are supposed to be heard." I have to agree. Despite Neil's well-known emphasis on high-fidelity sound, I love my memories of listening to Neil Young songs on the extremely lo-fi 8-track player I had in the 70s pickup truck that was my first car. In contrast to every other song on the album, "Byzantine" offers scenes of real-life happiness and a healthy relationship, even as the singer is concerned that he not overthink it.
Finally, "California Snow" is one of those weird Weezer bragging songs, in which super-nerdy Weezer has fun pretending they're the coolest people ever, as previously heard in songs like "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived" and "The Futurescope Trilogy." Complete with a Christ-figure self-reference, the lyrics back up arena rock riffs with lines like "This is the definition of flow / Nobody as cold as this." If this song were meant to be taken seriously, it would be obnoxious. At the same time, it's more than a joke, because in the stories of our lives we really are the main characters, whose ups and down truly feel--and are--epic.
Conclusion
1. This album has more swears and drug references than I'd like my kids to hear, but I'd rather they hear it from me and Weezer than anyone else.
2. People don't buy albums anymore, and rock and roll certainly seems dead. Long live rock!
3. The world doesn't need another Weezer record, which is the brilliance of the Black Album. What does it mean that life, people, feelings, work, and goodness are so cheap and disposable these days? While the Black Album and the efforts of bands like Weezer might seem like exercises in nostalgia or irony, I love how these songs pay close attention to the low value that seems increasingly attached to our lives and efforts. Such attention turns this otherwise goofy set of songs into a work of art.
Weezer, 2019
Introduction
As a teen and young adult in the 90s--I turned 13 in 1990--I always liked how Weezer blended favorite elements of the white guy soundscape: post-Nirvana power-pop nerd rock.
I became more than casually interested in Weezer in 2005, when "Make Believe" came out. It intrigued me that a 90s band was still putting out an ambitious-sounding album. I was starting a solo road trip driving my parent's little Toyota Echo from my hometown of Walla Walla, Washington to Toledo, Ohio, where it would become my family's first second car. I bought "Make Believe" on its release day at Hot Poop (Walla Walla's only bing bang stereo shop), headed east into the Rockies, and listened to Weezer sing about feelings, regrets, hopes and fears for hours on end as I navigated a 4-cylinder compact car through a springtime blizzard that accompanied me all the way from Missoula to Bismarck.
Since then, I've made a point of keeping up with Weezer's new stuff. I'm not one who thinks that Weezer or singer/songwriter Rivers Cuomo is genius. Instead, Weezer has become a friend to go through the years with.
Song-by-Song Review
I'm a teacher, so I'll say that if Weezer turned in the Black Album to me in class, I'd give it a solid A-. The main knock on it would be the lack of a big single, but that's a small thing. From beginning to end, it's full of quality power pop, produced in a way that sounds contemporary, without the production getting in the way of the songs. The lyrics are intriguing, occasionally provocative, and sometimes even poetic. The repeated line "She cut me like a piece of cake" is one the best lyrics I've ever heard, and I have hardly any idea what it means.
The opening track, "Can't Knock the Hustle," takes on today's gig economy, from the perspective of someone who has no alternative but to trust their own ability to be a creator and influencer. It sounds like conversations we're all having about being stretched thin from trying to make it. Because I listen to Weezer with my three kids, I'm not crazy about the swears here and elsewhere in the album. But under the rubric of hanging with friends, I have to admit that I swear in front of the kids, too. That's just where we are these days.
"Zombie Bastards" might literally be a song about watching TV or playing Plants vs Zombies. But in the current moment, I also hear it as a commitment to fight mindlessness and to resist the idiotic nonsense that dominates public life these days. Plus, it has a bouncy tune.
A similar question of literal interpretation makes "High as a Kite" surprisingly fascinating. Is it a song about parasailing, as the first line suggests? Is it barely more metaphorically about doing drugs? Could be. Regardless, the straight-up longing for peace and safety is beautiful: "I'm high as a kite / don't you think they'd know what I'm worth / flying like a beautiful bird." This song has convinced me that it's not just a cheesy or ironic power ballad; it's a genuine question of how to claim the worth and peace everyone deserves on a very basic level.
"Living in L.A." adds to the significant number of Weezer songs about Southern California, which would get annoying, except that every time I go to SoCal I can't help but admit that it has a special kind of awesomeness. This song mixes that west coast magic with romantic angst by being a song about a lonely guy in a big city.
As mentioned above, "Piece of Cake" has one of the best choruses ever, sung to a great melody. Like "Living in L.A.," it's another song about a lonely guy, which would be cliche if weren't so real. Part of what I've started to appreciate as an adult who still listens to pop songs about broken hearts is that most men are not raised to develop emotional intelligence. In general, men have a hard time talking about feelings, admitting that we have emotional needs, and letting our guard down about hurts and fears. And so these feelings come out sideways in our lives as tough-guy nonsense. I like how Weezer frequently tackles these emotional shortcomings. Songs like "Piece of Cake" invite sitting with uncomfortable feelings to start the process of owning them.
If men are bad at dealing with feelings in "Piece of Cake," then "I'm Just Being Honest" tackles emotional challenges from a different angle. There's a fine line between being honest and being an insensitive jerk. That's the theme of this confessional power pop nugget, which would have fit nicely on "Make Believe" or the Red Album. The same goes with the next song, "Too Many Thoughts in My Head," which could seem like it doesn't add much, except for how personal it gets in the bridge:
I never wanted to be lonely
I never thought that life would turn out like this
I never thought that I'd feel empty
I'm really tired of this Lawrence Welk shit
What is the Lawrence Welk shit? I don't know exactly, but this song adds mounting evidence to the diagnosis of a common disease of our time: being surrounded by noise and limitless possibility, while feeling empty in the middle of it all.
"The Prince Who Wanted Everything" seems to re-imagine the life of the late great Prince as a riches to rags story, which is kind of true. More broadly, the song presents the tragedy that great art doesn't often get the chance to make the positive difference that it should or could. The next song, "Byzantine," starts with lines about another rocker, this time Neil Young. The singer says he wants to hear Neil Young through his girlfriend's smartphone speakers, which is "how his songs are supposed to be heard." I have to agree. Despite Neil's well-known emphasis on high-fidelity sound, I love my memories of listening to Neil Young songs on the extremely lo-fi 8-track player I had in the 70s pickup truck that was my first car. In contrast to every other song on the album, "Byzantine" offers scenes of real-life happiness and a healthy relationship, even as the singer is concerned that he not overthink it.
Finally, "California Snow" is one of those weird Weezer bragging songs, in which super-nerdy Weezer has fun pretending they're the coolest people ever, as previously heard in songs like "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived" and "The Futurescope Trilogy." Complete with a Christ-figure self-reference, the lyrics back up arena rock riffs with lines like "This is the definition of flow / Nobody as cold as this." If this song were meant to be taken seriously, it would be obnoxious. At the same time, it's more than a joke, because in the stories of our lives we really are the main characters, whose ups and down truly feel--and are--epic.
Conclusion
1. This album has more swears and drug references than I'd like my kids to hear, but I'd rather they hear it from me and Weezer than anyone else.
2. People don't buy albums anymore, and rock and roll certainly seems dead. Long live rock!
3. The world doesn't need another Weezer record, which is the brilliance of the Black Album. What does it mean that life, people, feelings, work, and goodness are so cheap and disposable these days? While the Black Album and the efforts of bands like Weezer might seem like exercises in nostalgia or irony, I love how these songs pay close attention to the low value that seems increasingly attached to our lives and efforts. Such attention turns this otherwise goofy set of songs into a work of art.