The 2016 installment of Weezer isn't nearly as messy as the group's last color-coded eponymous record.
Make no mistake, The White Album is the long awaited and worthy successor to Pinkerton. And that’s not an exaggeration of any kind.
This isn't The Blue Album. This isn't Pinkerton. Nothing Weezer have released in the years since ever could be. That doesn't mean the band can't make good records. It just means they just spent a few too many years choosing not to.
It might not be the best batch of songs Rivers has written since the ’90s ... but its front-to-back coherence as the Third Weezer Album You Always Wanted But Long Gave Up Hoping For is simply staggering.
In writing White Album, Cuomo stresses how he felt he hadn’t made a full-blown beach album, even though many would be quick to defend that Blue Album is the quintessential nineties surf rock album. But never has there been a theme attached to it, and in White Album, Weezer are dutifully following a similar pop template akin to The Beach Boys’ pre-psychedelia streak.
Damn, Weezer! Back at it again with the White Album!
After enduring low points like Make Believe and Hurley, Weezer fans finally have their favorite band back making music that’s both catchy and emotionally resonant.
It will satisfy the band’s longtime fans that are still weary (and wary) from a decade of really dubious music from the band. But it also manages to add some new wrinkles to Weezer’s overall sound.
We listen to Weezer in 2016 largely for nostalgic dog whistles ... Most of all, we listen for reassurance that our beloved Weezer can avoid relapsing completely into embarrassment—and by those parameters, mediocre may as well be magnificent.
The latest attempt at complete reversion is comforting and sweet - it's nice to know Rivers finally woke up - but it's cheapened by the sense that it's just too late now.
Although The White Album is predictable in that its singles are stand-outs, that just feels like another way that Weezer are doing a great job at sounding like Weezer.
What with the new Star Wars movie coming out, the timing for this particular brand of dinosaur nostalgia couldn’t be better, and I presume it’s why I’m still somehow made aware of the arrival of a new Weezer record while a genuinely great nostalgic bubblegum party record by, say, the Go! Team comes and goes and nobody even flinches.
White is... fine. It’s OK, it’s not bad, but it’s largely standard Weezer and the stand-out tracks are fewer and further between.
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