Weezer have had a pretty eventful last five years. They started it off with 2014's Everything Will Be Alright in the End, their best album in quite some time to that point. They continued this success with their excellent self-titled record (aka the White Album) in 2016. However, after the overly poppy Pacific Daydream and their paint by numbers covers album earlier this year, my hopes were not high. In short, they deliver a pretty mixed bag on The Black Album, but where’s the fun in a short story? That’s why I’m going to go through this one track by track.
‘Can’t Knock The Hustle’: This pseudo-funk groove starts out with some burping bass, mariachi style horns and some really pounding drums. The drums will be a continuing point of contention here, as I feel like they’re mixed a little too loud throughout. This track is a little repetitive in the chorus department, and the pretty cringey lyrics don’t make the song go by any faster.
‘Zombie Bastards’: This track has a pretty late ‘90s feel with its syncopated guitar lines, samples, and honest to god record scratches. I feel like I’m listening to a Jason Mraz b-side. The chorus devolves into ‘blah blah blahs’, as if River Cuomo couldn’t feel bothered to finish the hook. Not that the rest of the lyrics are any better. This almost reaches Pat Monahan levels of cringe.
‘High as a Kite’: Despite the pretty played out name of the track, this one isn’t half bad. The lyrics aren’t completely overwritten, and the bells and woodwinds at the beginning add a nice touch to a pretty mellow track. The instrumental explosion near the end really didn’t really need to happen, and came off a little obvious for a Weezer song. You don’t have to rock out on every song. People sometimes appreciate subtlety.
‘Living in LA’: After starting off with a filtered intro (which is starting to become my new pet peeve in pop music), the song entertains with a dance beat, acoustic guitar, and lyrics that aren’t the worst thing ever. It sounds a little bit like ‘Pork and Beans’ in the verses.
‘Piece of Cake’: I have written in my notes for this song, “Just why?” Lyrics like ‘let’s do hard drugs, fix our problems’ and ‘she cut me like a piece of cake’ have a place. It’s commonly known as the recycling bin. Instrumentally, pretty uninteresting. I heard the band composed all of the songs for the first time on a piano, which shows here, but doesn’t really help the song out in my eyes.
‘I’m Just Being Honest’: This song is the one that I saw as being the biggest squandering of potential of the entire album. The song goes into how some times, being completely honest can get you into trouble. Some of the examples are funny, but Rivers is pushing his luck by thinking he can critique somebody else’s music. Dude, this song comes right after ‘Piece of Cake’. I feel like a lot could be done with this idea, but the band really doesn’t deliver.
‘Too Many Thoughts’: This song has a pretty funky beat and a wah guitar line that’s pretty decent. It reminds me a bit of Of Montreal’s ‘A Girl Named Hello’ at the beginning. And then the lyrics happen. ‘High on Cookies’? Come on, man. There’s ways to joke around in songs, but a lot of this comes off as really try hard and like the band is really trying to play into this meme they’re quickly becoming.
‘The Prince Who Wanted Everything’: The only thing I could think about during this track was, “Is this song about Prince or not?’ There’s some pretty obvious reference to paisley (like Paisley Park) and red corvettes, but I wouldn’t have compared The Purple One’s hair to Joan Baez. Also, if the band is in fact celebrating one of the greatest instrumental talents of the past half century, they could have done so with a song that wasn’t so drab.
‘Byzantine’ Apart from the really annoying backing vocals, Latin rhythms and Mediterranean feel in the bridge, this song is utterly forgettable. Just another lyrical exercise in being “quirky”, but utterly failing.
‘California Snow’: This song is chock full of fuzzy synth, distorted guitar, and spiraling keyboards, and apart from the kind of place Teddy Roosevelt quote at the beginning, not too bad vocally. It’s ok.
All in all, this album was pretty mediocre to me. There’s not a whole lot on the record they haven’t done instrumentally before, and there’s not many standouts in the track list. I’d say this is somewhere in the middle of the bell curve if you were to graph the quality of Weezer’s output. For fans that jumped to the band’s defense after the release of The Teal Album saying “they’re just having fun”, I’d like to see their defense of this. At some point, they’re having fun at your expense. I guess I’ll just be one of those guys that listen to a few of their records and pretend that the others don’t exist.
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