On Weezer's Summery New Album, The Band's Biggest Influence Is... Themselves

By Chicagoist_Guest in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 1, 2016 6:00PM

By Andy Derer

The bleached-out beach scene on the cover of the tenth Weezer album leaves us with a dilemma. Weezer mastermind Rivers Cuomo gave up his intense, soul-searching emo rock after the second Weezer album Pinkerton flopped in 1996. However, the band's last album, Everything Will Be Alright In The End, found Cuomo revisiting the darkness of that era for the best Weezer album in a decade.

Does this serene beach vista (complete with a dude using a metal detector and ladies sunning) signal a content, middle-aged Cuomo happy to go through the “Beverly Hills” motions and return to the vapid mall-punk the band treaded on for most of the aughts? The answer is yes and no. The fourth self-titled Weezer album (dubbed the White Album) finds Cuomo and company relaxed and self-assured as they tackle ten songs that all sound like a quiet homage to Brian Wilson’s ideal California. The production, courtesy of relatively new name Jake Sinclair, is a detailed, cinematic backdrop for Cuomo’s best and tightest set of songs in years. All soaring choruses and huge guitar solos, the band sounds like the confident unit that only 25 years on the road can yield.

While Sinclair made his name with 5 Seconds of Summer, The White Album thankfully doesn’t try to make any concessions to current pop radio—while making every concession to pop radio of 1978. Only “Jacked Up," with its pounding keyboard riff and soulful vocal, sounds like anything that could be found on a current pop station.The pop music of The Beach Boys, Big Star, Teenage Fanclub are more what the guys are going for here.

The biggest influence to be found on the record, though, is a band called…Weezer. One could say that Weezer has been writing the same song since 1994, but it’s a hell of a song. “Do You Wanna Get High?” pairs a tongue-in-cheek lyric with a chord progression so familiar to Weezer fans that you can tell it’s a Weezer song from a mile away. “(Girl We Got A) Good Thing” finds Cuomo singing a sweet love song backed by sleigh bells until a huge chorus kicks in. “L.A. Girlz” sounds like a Pinkerton outtake married to a wall-of-sound production that would have seemed unhip in 1996, but totally works in 2016. Throughout, Cuomo's vocals and guitar work sound better here than they did 20 years ago.

Album closer “Endless Bummer” begins as a tasty acoustic confection, with Cuomo utilizing the same “hip, hip” vocal tick used on “Island In The Sun.” Then the band comes in and brings the whole record home with a cord-pulling guitar solo. This is a summer album, but Cuomo can never play an idea completely straight; that's why “Endless Bummer” ends the album with this classic Cuomo lyric: “Kumbaya makes me get violent. I just want the summer to end.”

Andy Derer is host of The Andy Derer Show, one of Chicago's longest running music interview podcasts. He is also a writer, musician and restaurateur from the western suburb of Westmont. The man is also an outspoken proponent of the compact disc and owns over 4,000 of them.