IN REVIEW: Weezer - "SZNZ: Autumn"

 

When reviewing the first of Weezer's four seasonal EPs back in March, I talked about how they seemed to be enforcing arbitrary rules of aesthetics in service to the "spring" gimmick, which could be seen as a disservice to otherwise fine songs that didn't need to be twisted toward a concept, as loose as it was; even a quarter of the way through this ambitious exercise, it was clear that not every idea was bound to stick, and this was confirmed by the SZNZ: Summer EP. Choosing not to take the layup and offer up the bright melodies and sun-soaked hooks that they're best at, Weezer went into full wildfire mode for summer, packing the EP with scorched guitars and clumsy genre mashups.

For SZNZ: Autumn, one might glance at the spookiness of the cover and expect some touches of goth, new wave or even a little doom metal, and yet it's being talked up as "the dance one", and these seven songs are as likely a soundtrack to your changing leaves and pumpkin spice lattes as any in the mind of Rivers Cuomo. Doubling down on the genre cramming, there are hints of synth rock, power pop, classical and boogie metal while employing some of the expected Weezerisms, and that's just on the first two tracks. Can't Dance, Don't Ask Me attempts to introduce the set with some comfortable Weezer energy but can't stop itself from cutting off its own momentum with a slowed down breakdown; Get Off On the Pain, meanwhile, can't decide on its sound for longer than twenty seconds or so before bouncing awkwardly into the next idea.

The apparent single, What Happens After You? is the obvious choice for this EP's sales representative with its tasteful neon splashes, bright hook and admittedly danceable beat (oh, there's the dance part they were talking about); there's some satisfying guitar crunch added to prevent the song from veering too hard into pop (including a serviceable solo) and, if Weezer were to fully commit to the dance aesthetic, this would be a fine jumping off point. Of course, there is no commitment to the bit here, and Francesca follows as a tediously standard modern day Weezer song (but maybe if we force in some synth and syncopated hi-hats on the chorus we can still sell this as dance music, because apparently that's all it takes).

Synth opens Should She Stay or Should She Go, after six seconds of which it drops out and Rivers says "maybe think Old Testament?"; this could allude to biblical ambitions and/or the thrash metal titans, and a second voice (belonging to bandmate, producer, whoever, it's not important enough for me to research) asks for just that clarification as the band launches into a bland, mid-tempo number that doesn't offer anything that sounds like The Old Testament or Testament the metal band. Instead, there's a beat reminding me of Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World and a brief, messy saxophone appearance toward the song's conclusion. Tellingly, the fact that it doesn't go completely off the rails makes it a highlight of the set by default.

This is followed by the Vivaldi interpolation Tastes Like Pain (much of the main melody of which is cribbed from the winter movement of The Four Seasons, but we won't let that stop us), a mercifully short and haphazardly stitched together two-minute blithering mess of a song; it leads to Run, Raven, Run, a somewhat straightforward ending to the EP. At least until the two minute mark, at which point the tempo is cut in half; it's not as jarring as some of the other transitions on the EP, and it even makes way for a pretty solo and some semblance of the gothic atmosphere that the cover seems to advertise. The song picks up in intensity and builds toward what's sure to be a triumphant ending; however, the bottom falls out, the cacophony abruptly ends and Rivers starts shakily singing over a sparse xylophone melody before the EP ends with some spooky sound effects.

I don't think anyone, not even Weezer, expected the SZNZ project to maintain an air of consistent quality over the course of nearly thirty tracks by the time this thing finishes rolling out; that said, I find it alarming that this four volume project has gone from a well-intended exploration of the seasons to a dumping ground for half-baked ideas barely past the halfway point. Think about it; this is a set of songs that, under the guise of the original concept, was supposed to evoke fall but instead turned out a scattershot, tangled mess of disparate moods and styles that evokes nothing as much as it does Weezer's inability to stick to a vision and see it through. That forced, dramatic ending of church bells and crows carries with it not just a level of mild cringe, but also an ominous warning to those of us baffled by just how far off the mark the SZNZ project has drifted: Winter is coming.

September 22, 2022 • Crush/Atlantic

Highlights What Happens After You? • Should She Stay or Should She Go