For 20 years an excellent, or even a good Weezer album has been the exception to the rule. The insincere, moronic and often aggressively frivolous Pacific Daydream is the latest maddeningly awful record from a band who, FINALLY, seemed back on the right track after a run of good-to-excellent recent albums.
A preoccupation with dumb normie shit runs through this record; the conspicuously obnoxious drop in initial single ‘Feels Like Summer‘, the moment which scratched an omen early doors on the forehead of this entire album; a consistent devotion throughout to the dumb, airey ‘fun in the sun‘ concept the band have vaguely pawed at over the years; the ridiculous sick-making crap of the synthetic autotune dance anthem concept glutting through the whole album. In other words, it’s a return to form for Weezer in that it’s shit.
This one hits especially hard though, as it comes just over a year after the first – or, rather, the only – genuinely amazing Weezer album since the 90s and sporadic subsequent heydays. 2016’s White Album knocked it out of the park – an unshowy album of mature, funny, moving, insanely tuneful rock songs; more importantly, it proved the band’s pre-bastardsation-of-the-word emo is still up to the task of getting people through and over things in life.
I can’t accept the guy who is still capable of writing – very recently – ‘Thank God For Girls‘, ‘California Kids‘, ‘I Love the USA‘, ‘Everybody Needs Salvation‘ and ‘L.A. Girlz‘ is pissing out the stuff on Pacific Daydream without knowing exactly what he’s unleashing tbqhwyiaf (What? – Albums Ed).
The band feel like they’re LARPing at both making generic dance pop songs, and alternatively singer Rivers Cuomo is making what some Chainsmokers douche would consider deep or touching indie music, which in reality is just as glib and objectionable.
I remain unconvinced that the majority of Pacific Daydream isn’t just Rivers doing it for a joke. It’s so generic and pitch-perfectly idiotic for it not to be.
Alternatively, is it the case that he records and writes so many songs all the time as a matter of course, like yawning or sneezing, that if the record label net, or band’s whim to put out another album falls at the wrong moment we’re simply left to deal with another collection of exasperating nonsense until next time? Maybe. The past few years have shown that he’s still more – more – than capable of dishing out the goods.
Oh well. We’ll spin the wheel and see what they come up with next time.
Pacific Daydream is out now on Atlantic Records.
