Weezer | Everything Will Be Alright In the End
This album is really good. No, trust me. I know Weezer has put out like 10 albums in a row that suck but these are the best songs they have recorded since Pinkerton. No hyperbole. It’s like Rivers finally decided to stop fucking around and write good songs that aren’t jokes or just plain terrible after 15 years. They actually get into this on their first single “Back to the Shack”, but they don’t just throw that one song out there as a bone for the dwindling faithful. The whole album is Weezer playing alt-rock again and it’s worth listening to if you ever liked the band at any point in your life.
Everything Will Be Alright In the End fits in musically like it was recorded between The Green Album and Maladroit maybe? Every song is the power-pop displayed on Weezer’s first few albums before Rivers got bored and decided he needed more hip hop, dance, and gimmicky tracks on each subsequent album… even though he was a nerdy white guy who didn’t know how to write songs for those genres. At first it seemed that Weezer was trying to be ironic, but as the “Can’t Stop Partying”-type songs kept piling up it was hard to believe that band was still in on the joke. I’m all for bands experimenting but after awhile it’s hard not to write them off. Somehow, they stopped partying and came back to their alternative rock roots on this album. Even the songs that get a little weird like “The British Are Coming” (about, well, you can guess) fits musically with the rest of the album.
As anyone who has listened to musicians interviewed before their next album drops can tell you, most of the time a promoted return to a band’s previous sound is a load of crap. It’s like in baseball when a player comes to Spring Training saying they are in the best shape of their life after having a terrible season the year before. Everyone knows they are lying but we give them the benefit of the doubt and 2 months into the season when their team releases them for being washed up we all say we should have seen it coming. When a band says their next album is the best work they have done since their debut, or that it sounds a lot more like their fan favorite 2nd album, what you really should be expecting is an album that sounds like the songs you hated last year, only worse. On the rare occasion that a band actually tries to make something sound like their previously favored work it just doesn’t sound good anyway. Something is off, like using the same ingredients but in the wrong proportions. There’s usually a reason the band stopped sounding like that, and as they say (I don’t actually know anyone that says this) you can’t go back to the well.
But Weezer went back (to the shack?) anyway. And I couldn’t be happier that they did. It’s hooky and straightforward. No more oppressive production and unrelatable synth nightmares. Pop songs like “Lonely Girl” and “Da Vinci” play like Green Album songs with a little more depth, while “Ain’t Got Nobody”, “I’ve Had It Up to Here” and “Cleopatra” combine some of the things they learned over the last 20 years with Blue and Pinkerton–era gold. The guest vocals from Bethany Cosentino on “Go Away” were a nice touch, reminding me of the old b-side “I Just Threw Away the Love of My Dreams” and there are even some signature Weezer guitar solos on” The Futurescope Triology” that should recall the breakdown from “Only In Dreams”. Weezer went back to the well and they fixed it up real nice. Fuck partying, I can’t stop listening. Everything Will Be Alright in the End is the water source that keeps on giving. Drink up.
The Drink: A Shipyard non-pumpkin beer because they started in 1994 like Weezer and this albums seems like a beer kind of album.
Bake
Latest posts by Bake (see all)
- Ben Nichols @ The Turf Club, St. Paul, Mn 6/5/16 - June 10, 2016
- Houndmouth | From the Hills Below the City - May 29, 2016
- Sturgill Simpson | A Sailor’s Guide to Earth - May 15, 2016
I listened to an interview of Rivers with Marc Maron a couple days ago, and it was really good, but this article convinced me to finally give a listen, that and hearing that it was produced by the same guy who produced the blue album. I love the blue album, and Pinkerton was a huge life changing album for me (yea I’m one of those fans). This album is like an apology for the rest of the albums for fans like me. I forgive you Weezer.
It’s amazing, it’s like the last two decades didn’t happen. Well except all the bad stuff in the middle. Nevermind, you’re right, forgiveness.
[…] used to, they were just making objectively bad music. Then in 2014 they released the aptly titled Everything Will Be Alright In the End, and totally redeemed […]