Review Summary: Ego dormivi
Woohoo kids, it’s summer! It’s hot! It’s warm! It’s blazing! What will you do now in the two months you have off to do what you want? Do you theorise about how epic your time will be spent doing things? And then, do you, in reality, decide to sleep in for the next two months and then act like you’re not to blame for why your summer sucked? Well, if you answered “yeah!” to the last two statements, then you are the human manifestation of Weezer’s next entry into their
SZNZ quadrilogy,
Summer, which is effectively the culmination of the Akrasia effect over seven songs. As per the concept of the EP cycle,
SZNS: Summer is a very warm feeling album, and can best be described as the combination of
The Red Album meets
The Black Album, while briefly bumping into
Maladroit and
OK Human along the way; outside of the religious/Shaekspearen dialect, it shares very little in common with its predecessor,
SZNS: Spring, musically, tonally… and, unfortunately, with quality.
What makes
SZNS: Summer a lacklustre album compared to
SZNS: Spring is that it lacks a properly distinguishable identity or purpose, and rather exists as a confused entity taking from Weezer’s past work and then some. While in concept
SZNS: Summer shows promise in making an album on “youthful indignation”*, as well as playing into the Roman/Classical aesthetic, Weezer fails to deliver on their promises of a grand performance, and instead decides to cosplay the romans for Halloween rather than actually playing the part. This botch job of a performance into the act means Weezer, more often than not, tries so hard to prove itself to be the aforementioned mood that its messages of rebellion and angst are either weak or poorly delivered; such as with the album’s pointless opener, “Lawn Chair”, which could be potentially grand but drags on and on by Cuomo’s whiny delivery, resulting in the song not really going anywhere and rendering it as merely filler. This lack of genuine effort also pervades all the songs, even if they’re pretty catchy; “Records”, for example, is somewhat good but feels rather disposable. The same problems pervade onto
SZNS: Summer’s music; while ambitious on songs like “Blue Like Jazz” (a good combination of classical instruments and heavy metal), never feel cohesively compositionally connected or reaching of its potential, which becomes a problem especially when transitioning to bridges; especially on “Cuomoville”, which has quite possibly the weakest and worst delivery of “feed them to the lions” I have heard in my life, and the “Me Too!” chants in the bridge of “The Opposite of Me”, which ruin the album’s best “heavy” moment. It’s not to say that the song’s are musically bad; they don’t hurt to listen to but you may cringe a little.
“Cringe”, or just “what”, also comes to mind when discussing
SZNS: Summer’s lyrical content. Lyrically,
SZNS: Summer is Weezer’s most nihilistic and pessimistic release yet; there are a variety of times where this is excellently executed such as in “Lawn Chair (“Unsatisfied with rain, you made tears/And threw out your baby expecting we'd praise ye/And worship your name in a song”) and the dramatic finale of “Thank You and Goodnight”, but the lack of genuinity and “forced” nature of some of some songs creates either teenager-tryhard quality (“From mortal to immortality/Immorality/Amorality/The opposite of me”), textbook stereoptical lyrics (the bridge of “What’s The Good in Being Good”) or, in the words of Anthony Fantano, “Wack Bars” (“Ain't no kid on crutches, ain't no kid on crutches/Let's see where the love is when I'm buzzin'”) creates a sense of ingenuity. This, combined with the lack of musical energy, creates a large disconnect between
SZNS: Summer’s nihilistic lyrical content and feels honestly discomforting and harder to relate to. And even with some of the well executed lyrics, Rivers Cuomo sometimes has dead/dry/unenthusiastic delivery and never sings them well, and his inconsistency/disconnect is mildly infuriating and a little pretentious (moreso than
SZNS: Spring) but tolerable.
And finally, we come to easily the album’s worst part; the production. The production on
SZNS: Summer is inoffensive but hampering; for a “heavy” album, the singular flatline of distortion that makes up the riffs and the deadbeat drums severely reduces the heaviness of some of the songs on the album, especially on “Lawn Chair” and “Blue Like Jazz”. “Blue Like Jazz” is unfairly but unfortunately affected by this; it’s a song that has some of the best parts of Weezer, with the heavy metal ditty riffs and a simple yet effective chorus, but its production makes it kind of dull. The mixing here is also ineffectual; while not making anything inaudible, it makes sound of the songs as bland and viscous as crude oil, and means the variety of instruments never really are given time to stand out for doing their own thing.
SZNS: Summer wants to be ambitious and the proof is there with its violins, choir vocals and interesting guitar playing, but ultimately remains trapped in the “Weezer Creativity Box” of their signature-ness simplicity (and monotony) which hampers the band’s ability to pull off these things. It is too simple in lyrics and sometimes in music to achieve its aims, which sucks as there's so much evidence of greatness between the lacklustre parts.
If there is one takeaway from
SZNS: Summer, it is that ambition does not necessarily lead to the intended end product. For
SZNS: Summer, this ambition is too large for the “Weezer Creativity Box” and its limitations, and never really achieves its aims or full potential; however, it is not poor quality by any means overall, just rather underwhelming and very average. So yeah, like how the EP covers are,
SZNS: Summer is more of the same for Weezer, but sets fire to most of the good attributes of
SZNS: Spring, leaving only ashes and hints of the good stuff behind in terms of its execution. But hey, bonfires are sorta entertaining to look at… so I guess watching it all burn is sorta cool. But that’s as entertaining as it gets. Feel the warmth while it lasts.
2.5/5
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* f.y.i. Indignation = annoyance at unfair treatment
Listen to the album here: https://weezer.lnk.to/sznzsummer
