Everything Will Be Alright In The End

Weezer

Island, 2014

http://www.weezer.com

REVIEW BY: Pete Crigler

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 10/20/2014

Here’s the good news: after a well-deserved four year break, Weezer has come back with their make or break ninth album. After years of shit (Raditude) and decent enough records (The Red Album), the band and Rivers Cuomo are convinced this is the album to break them out of their slump. Bad news: it’s not the smash blockbuster record they wanted but it is a step in the right direction. There’s no rapping, only one guest appearance and for the most part, the outside songwriters present are members of Ozma, some of the band’s longtime friends.

“Ain’t Got Nobody” is a decent enough opening track with some great backing vocals and very little of the pop sap found on previous records, thank God! The lead single, “Back To The Shack” is a great number, co-written with an outside writer that slyly winks at past mistakes that Rivers and company have made with an attempt to get back to what made Weezer so great in the first place. Great soloing on the track harkens back the glory days of 2001 Weezer.my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250

Unfortunately, the album as a whole comes across as only average. A track like “Eulogy For A Rock Band” is very slow out of the gate and never really picks up enough steam to be any good. “Cleopatra” sounds like something from Maladroit, with a lot of guitars but nothing catchy enough to make it any more memorable. “Lonely Girl,” on the other hand, has some great guitar work and is another great song to add to the Rivers Cuomo canon.

“I’ve Had It Up To Here” reeks of late 2000s era Weezer and is one of the worst tracks here; it just brings up to many bad memories of the past. “Da Vinci” is another of Rivers’ love songs that is average enough to make it decent. “Go Away,” a great collaboration with Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast, is the best track on the album; great vocal interplay and amazing musicianship really strengthen the song and make it a standout.

The album closes with a trilogy of songs, two of which are instrumentals, tied together in a motif that just comes across as very middling. Part II, “Anonymous” is the best of the three, a different type of song for Weezer and a great step in the right direction. Part III is some of the loudest, most chaotic music the band has come up since the reckless abandon of the debut album.

So while this is just another average Weezer album, it is a great leap forward in the right direction. What the band needs to do to attain complete perfection is to completely ditch all the outside writers, crank the amps up to 11 again and make the great American rock record, like they did previously in 1994 and 1996 – and then everything will truly be alright in the end.

Rating: C+

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