Weezer – The White AlbumEmpty Bottle Evenings

Apr162016April 16, 2016April 22, 2016No Commentby Bake

220px-Cover_of_Weezer's_White_Album,2016

Weezer – The White Album

Posted in Music

For a band that I like Weezer has made a lot of truly awful songs. I mean for awhile there in the 2000s nearly every album that they released was entirely trash. I must have been a masochist to have dug through dozens of shitty synth indulgences and top 40 gimmick tracks to find 1 or 2 songs that I liked. Most fans gave up on them and who could blame them with the band they loved in the early ’90s straying so far from that sound into something that no one could love. I mean it’s not like they went in a different creative direction that just no what people were used to, they were just making objectively bad music. Then in 2014 they released the aptly titled Everything Will Be Alright In the End, and totally redeemed themselves!

Alright, not totally. They did make fans suffer through a full decade of shit, but it was a really good album. If you were a fan of early Weezer it should have at least been unexpectedly enjoyable if not forgiveness provoking. The whole album was full of actual rock songs: no embarrassing hip-hop collaborations, dance tracks, or whatever other garbage Rivers Cuomo thinks is a good idea when he’s bored. Everything Will Be Alright In the End was as close to The Blue Album and Pinkerton that we’ll ever get again. So I guess it’s fitting that its follow up album (Self-Titled/White) is probably closest to album number three, The Green Album. Like its 2001 counterpart, the new album is light and airy pop rock, nothing heavy in lyrical or musical content, but the kind of album you can listen to driving around on a nice day with the windows down. It’s a self confessed “beach album” which is fitting, but instead of being so beachy like “Island in the Sun” that the Olsen Twins could cover it, songs like “California Kids” find a happy medium between accessible and “Full House-accessible”.

There are still two radio singles in the tradition of their previous albums (“Thank God for Girls”, “Do You Wanna Get High?”) but they are tolerable in the context of the album. The whole thing moves by pretty fast, just over 34 minutes, which is about perfect for a record like this. Short and sweet. The White Album won’t blow you away but as winter is finally ending its worth a listen on a nice sunny day. Where Weezer goes from here, who knows? Hopefully it won’t be the same track of recreating counterparts of their previous albums because good god no one needs another Red Album or Raditude. But for now I’m enjoying their comeback to the past.