Weezer wheezes out another fucking travesty...

Oh, Rivers. What an absolute shame, the mess you’ve ended up in. Weezer was hot shit in the ‘90s. The Blue Album spoke to a generation of individuals who felt introverted and alone. It was a dorky, confessional, energetic mess – and never once did the heart fail to shine through. Then, the story goes, you got bored of laying groupies, you were longing for something “deeper,” and you put out Pinkerton, your last good album (though it was skewered by the critics of the day). But, Rivers, your goofy attempts to reanimate the band have thoroughly alienated your original fans. If you were so aghast at the idea of selling out, why did you?

After Pinkerton, the band broke up, a hiatus that lasted for five years. But their return, and subsequent albums, were never the same. They seem to have lost their target demographic, focusing their efforts instead on trying to make songs that would chart – except they never really did. The dorky fun of their old albums was abandoned, and replaced with straight-up mediocrity. The albums are limp and flaccid, and have none of the spark that captivated so many so few years earlier. The lyrics were watered down and meaningless. The guitar had none of the appealing quirk. The introduction of some electronic textures did little to appeal to their old fanbase and were too forced to make it mainstream (and that was a low bar in the mid-00’s). They were making music for nobody, and they knew it.

Catching word that a new Weezer album is out soon brings me an eerie sense of the passing of time, a kind of déjà vu. At first, there’s a pang of excitement, a nostalgic what-if-the-old-Weezer-is-back hope that they’ve shitcanned their generic washed-out pop sound, and are going back to their roots, to the ethos that made their first two albums so close to my heart while I was growing up. Then the singles roll out (strike one), they post some dorky shit on their Facebook about how they’re going back to their old sound for real this time (strike two), and finally the album in its entirety is here, and it’s a generic washed-out poppy mess with no appeal to either the mainstream or the last desperately-clinging-on fan (strike three).

The new album is a mess of generic lyrics that appeal to nobody, featuring no new musical ideas for the band besides trying to sound like a washed-up pop star trying to mount a comeback, and incorporating absolutely nothing appealing to any person with working ears. Try and find a target audience for this album – you can’t. It’s an uncompelling, boring, mediocre medley of bland guitar sounds and sappy, saccharine, vomit-inducing lyrics, with few, if any redeeming moments in sight. Listening to this album felt like trying to move my bowels during a round of intense constipation, without the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing up. I’d almost, almost rather read Atlas Shrugged.

Here’s a taste of the blandness: Rivers collected random snippets of lyrics over the past ten years, stuck them into a spreadsheet, then hired programmers to figure out information like possible progressions and beats per minute. This is how he wrote the album. Quoth Cuomo: “Instead of trying to force myself to feel inspired, I can just go into the spreadsheet and search ...I just try them out to see which ones work magically.” Fuck you, bud.

Pacific Daydream exhausted me to listen to. It’s phoned-in pap. I’d rather lick roadkill than listen to it again. The album has less flavor than a cheese sandwich, ready-salted crisps, and water meal deal from Tesco.

This album is another stepping stone in the band’s slow march to obscurity. Godspeed.

1.5 Stars

Artist: Weezer Label: Crush Management / Atlantic Records. Top Tracks: The few seconds of silence between each track For Fans Of: sadomasochism; persistent ear pain. Too long.