IN REVIEW: Weezer - S/T (The Black Album)

At this point, a quarter century into their career and with a dozen studio albums of original material under their belts, it's kind of shocking that anybody still gives a shit about Weezer. Their best days are long behind them at this point, and they've spent the better part of the last fifteen years or so alternating between underwhelming artistic detours and outright awful attempts at relevance.

Before the release of this, their sixth self-titled record, Weezer earned their biggest hit in years in the form of a faithful cover of Toto's Africa, as spurred on by a tweet and the eventual endgame for which became a full album of covers that was surprise released mere weeks before dropping "the black album. That "the teal album", a meme-worthy but painfully on-the-nose collection of covers garnered more attention than their new album of original songs says a lot about Weezer's current status; the majority of fans would rather hear them play cheesy songs by other people than put up with another record full of cheesy songs by Weezer.

As a pop album in 2019, Weezer isn't so egregious, and has a fair share of hooks. That said, like most of their recent output, it's a pretty bad Weezer record. The endearing, dorky guitar pop that they became known for has long now been an afterthought to perpetual hit-chasing Rivers Cuomo, just a relic to be pulled out and dusted off whenever the cries of disgruntled listeners get a little too loud. Here, there is precious little remaining of the winsome band who broke out 25 years ago with crunchy guitar pop and sad sack tales of awkward love. Instead, Weezer plays like the result of an algorithm; you know, the one that showed Rivers what kinds of songs are scientifically proven to attract streams from the widest demographic as possible.

Let's be clear about this, Weezer fans; if you hadn't figured it out already, Weezer doesn't care about you and doesn't give a toss about your satisfaction in their product. They're here to do the bidding of whoever is willing to give them the highest exposure, and to this point it has worked to a baffling degree. Africa gave them an undeserved free pass after the abomination that was Pacific Daydream, a lightning strike of notoriety that begat nine more attempts at the same novelty in "the teal album", which itself acts as a buffer against the bland, trite and contrived "black album". Through all of the dud records and trend chasing, Weezer have now built more of a reputation for what they've done wrong than what they've gotten right; and still, they manage just enough intrigue to keep us guessing to what level we'll be disappointed next which, when you really think about it, is actually kind of amazing.

March 1, 2019 • Crush/Atlantic
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