Review Summary: He's a remarkable guy, he keeps you trying new things, he keeps you young.
Expectations on Weezer were pretty high, and this album, while not fully living up to them, for sure doesn’t fall short.
Weezer’s line-up is always the same, while the White Album producer, Jake Sinclair, didn’t work with them on this record, since Cuomo felt he was trying too much to make them sound like their 90’s albums. In his place, producer Butch Walker, who already worked with them on their infamous Raditude, was called in. He plays a pretty important role in the band’s sound on this album, but we’ll get there later.
The band, at least to me, has never been very good in choosing the lead single for their album release, since most of them, even the great ones, fail to represent what the record is sonically about
: the most recent example, “Thank God for Girls”, while being a very interesting and experimental track in Weezer’s catalogue, didn’t sound like anything we would later hear on the White Album. Thus, when “Feels Like Summer”, the album’s first single, came out most of the people, and fans in particular, didn’t exactly know what to expect. An EDM track? By Weezer? Well, at least the rest of the album is going to be classic Weezer, right?
The second leak, “Mexican Fender”, seemed to confirm this, and took the fans back in White’s atmosphere. This is Pacific Daydream’s very first track, but it very much stands alone out of it, and serves as a link (or maybe a salute?) to their sound of the 00s and the 10s. We are welcomed into the album by a crunchy power chord riff which evolves into a very EWBAITE-esque song that proves to be one of the highlights of the album. The reference to “Everything Will Be Alright in the End” is not casual: the heavy distortion and instrumentation make it look like Weezer has something to prove, as they did on that album, and the timing of the song release, after “Feels Like Summer”, demonstrates this song might be Rivers giving the fans what they want, big guitars and old school sound, to focus back on his own musical output.
The very next track, “Beach Boys”, is in fact very different from the previous one. Sonically, it’s something we have never heard from Weezer, some kind of R’n’B rhythmic section on which Rivers sings in a very reverb-driven voice about keeping someone young by playing the Beach Boys, probably trying to convey a feeling of being out of place in “a hip-hop world”. The song, while not being my favorite in the album at all, could be the real representation of what this record is all about
: this is Weezer trying to adapt to the ever-changing world of music, trying new things to stay young but kind of feeling out of place in doing so. I don’t think this is what Rivers Cuomo feels about it, but it’s the exact impression I get out of this record.
The third song, “Feels Like Summer”, might be the best one on the album, albeit sounding again very different to what you would expect from Weezer. This track reminds me a lot of “Jacked Up” from White Album, both for the melancholic tone and the high-pitched falsetto in the chorus. It’s a well-crafted, intelligent electronic song, playing with the genre’s tropes such as pre-chorus build ups and break downs, and if you can forget for three minutes or so what Weezer sounded like instrumentally it’s really enjoyable.
After this high high, though, we get a pretty low low. “Happy Hour”, the record’s second single, is a bland piece of work, uninspired both lyrically and sonically. Again, Rivers’ voice sounds way overproduced, the lyrics, picking up another typical Weezer theme, escapism, feel just put together – and the coconut bit just feels awful -, and the music lacks that mid-time switch – a feature Weezer are masters of - that could have made the song at least interesting.
Closing the first half of the record, “Weekend Woman” is the re-working of a Green Album era song, “Burning Sun”, and it is another highlight of the album. The vocal melodies are sweet, the music is simple and fresh, yet the song suffers from overproduction an a rather unfitting bridge which brings it down.
The second half of the record has only one remarkable song, which is the seventh one, “Sweet Mary”. After a short instrumental intro, we hear the chorus, in which Rivers’ voice is sweetly cracking while singing about his gratitude towards his Sweet Mary. The song is indeed sweet, even though the bridge is pretty weak here. Other than this, this song’s merit is primarily that of being a small oasis of enjoyable music in that desert of blandness and boredom which is the second half of the record. “QB Blitz”, “Get Right”, “La Mancha Screwjob” and “Any Friend of Diane’s” feel uninspired and really, really boring, the second one being the worst track of the record after “Happy Hour”. The band sounds hardly like itself, and in a bad way this time, and uninventive acoustic guitars carry us to the very end of the record. I really don’t have much to say about the tracks one by one, they don’t have anything in particular that could be said to differentiate them. Truth be said, we get the only guitar solo of the record in the last track, “Any Friend of Diane’s”, but it’s kind of a mediocre one, especially from Cuomo, and the song itself makes for one of the worst closers for any Weezer album.
Overall, the record is clearly divided in two halves, the first being interesting and pretty solid even if not flawless, while the second is nothing but fillers that sound all the same and boring except for one track. Cuomo’s lyrics are getting a little more cryptical record after record but he is still masterful in delivering melancholy covered up in upbeat songs and memorable hooks. As a whole, the album feels way overproduced, and the absence of distorted guitars, while not being a bad thing per se, is too evident here. Since Cuomo and Bell are masters in crafting very effective guitar parts, I would have expected to hear something more than “Mexican Fender” and the solo from “Any Friend of Diane’s”, yet it seems like Rivers had tried his most not to rely on guitars on this record. On the other hand, the first half of the record somehow works and shows us the road Weezer will probably take in the future: more electronic instruments will be incorporated in their music, but I would recommend them not to forget what they used to sound like and to use some less over-the-top production, which really brought the record down.
To sum it up, I can’t say I liked the record, but I can’t say I hate it. We have some high highs, some low lows and a bunch of mediocre fillers which could have really been avoided. Die hard fans don’t seem to like it, nor does the new audience, those who like it don’t love it and, to say the least, reactions have been generally warm, so I guess Weezer will take note of feedbacks and they might work on the Black Album to make it something at a middle point between the White Album and Pacific Daydream: more guitars, more old school, the same amount of electronica and melancholia. I think I’m starting to feel the hype.
