Review Summary: I’m just a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a
Man, life sucks
Weezer are basically a meme band at this point and frankly I can’t blame them. Pinkerton bombing drove Rivers insane, so much so he blacked out all the windows in his apartment and started religiously listened to thousands of pop songs and crafting a colossal guide to what makes the best pop song. From those years of OCD like obsession we got the Green album, which wasn’t very good and it’s been up and down every since. Knowing their reputation, the group now focus on cover songs, after their terrible cover of Toto’s ‘Africa’ became a hit through a forced meme. I doubt Rivers gives a damn about it all though. As long as people here it, that is all that matters. Suffice to say, once the band changed direction in 2001, things have never been the same really, bar a few albums where they returned to their distorted power pop roots. Obviously there’s a big demand for material to sound like their early works, but the group really don’t seem to care and are satisfied with chasing whatever Rivers feels like chasing that particular day.
Enter Billy Cobb, a fairly well known YouTuber who makes list videos and other odds and sods about bands like Weezer. In fact, they’re his favourite band by the sounds of it. Cobb is a musician too and, apparently longing for the sound of old Weezer to return but growing impatient, made his own Weezer-lite EP to scratch that itch. ‘I got tried of waiting for Weezer to release a new album so i made one myself’ he writes in the YouTube description for the album. This raises a few questions. Weezer were releasing albums yearly at this point. In fact, In 2019 alone, they put out two. A horrible covers album and a forgettable half baked batch of Electropop. I doubt this record was made as a stop gap project and was more likely something he put together to prove that he could make a record that was just like Weezer, or maybe even better. This is where it bites him on the ass.
Zerwee is a shallow puddle of an EP. While it’s over in a scant 15 minutes, the sheer lack of ideas or understanding of the band’s material makes the whole thing seem like an hour long tour of a cement factory. In others words, an eternity. The four tracks here are basically what you would hear playing in a train station bathroom, drudged off an album full of sound alike songs made to wriggle past copyright laws and trick your brain into thinking ‘Oh is this Weezer?’ while you splash droplets of piss onto your pant leg at the urinal. Every song feels like a copy. ‘The Shell Shack’, with its chugging one note riff is ‘California Kids’. ‘Dumb Songs for Virgins to Cry too’ (GET IT? WEEZER VIRGIN BAND!!!1) is a pop punk version of ‘Surfer Girl’ by the friggin’ Beach Boys. ‘1955’ rubs too close to ‘The Other Way’ for comfort and, on god, ‘She Doesn’t Love Me’ is a note for note recreation of ‘Waiting On You’, so much so it’s borderline plagiarism.
The lyrics boil down to typical whingy ‘boo hoo girl don’t love me’ crap, completely forgetting the fact that the band sung about whatever they felt like and not just women. “But Pinkerton is about relationship issues” I hear you cry. Yes it was, and that was because of Rivers’ sexual frustrations at the time. Sure, nearly every Weezer album has some song about pining for love but they balance it out with songs about, you know; other topics. Drugs, The Beach Boys, islands in the sun, Christ even Cannolis. If you’re going to make a soundalike record at least focus on more than one aspect of the band. Disregarding that, the arrangements are typical bedroom pop fluff with mildly distorted guitars and vaguely Emo/pop melodies that you’d find a million other bands churning out at the time because, surprise surprise, Weezer made it popular. The worst part is that Cobb knows what he’s doing. He even calls the record ‘Greta Van Weezer’ in the description, despite claiming that it’s more than that in an interview and that it was more Inspired by bands like Ozma, themselves self confessed Weezer fanatics with music that fits the mould to an obnoxious degree. Through all of this I was left with one question burning into my skull. ‘Why aren’t I just listening to Weezer?’. If I wanted to listen to distorted power pop with a geeky emo flair, I’d pop on the goddamn Blue album and listening to that. It’s the same with Greta Van Fleet. Why listen to them when I can hear the same thing, but better with Led Zepplein? But noooo, this is different! This is inspired by other bands like Weezer. A copy of a copy as it were. You can smell the smug satisfaction seeping off this ***ing record as Cobb knows he’s baited the Internet into listening to his hahah ironic wink wink record. Again, just like Weezer.
Recommended tracks:
None
