Atlantic Records – 2021
I have already come to a conclusion about you, since you are here, reading this article. You see, most people already know if they are going to listen to a new Weezer album or not. If you’ve read this far, it says something about you. You are either (1) a Weezer devotee, scouring the internet for validation, (2) an annoyed hater, also scouring the internet for validation, (3) a hipster closet Weezer pseudo-fan, yearning for the magic words “it reminds me a lot of Pinkerton,” or (4) you’re like me, believing that Rivers Cuomo is a complicated songwriter whose lengthy career is sprinkled liberally with both hits and misses, and you need to scan a few people’s opinions and maybe land a recommendation for a first song to check out before you sink your teeth into the whole record or blow it off completely.
OK Human is Cuomo and company’s fourteenth studio album. Instinctively, when sizing up a Weezer album, a reviewer would be tempted to tell readers which other Weezer album the new one is in the vein of. Is this more like Maladroit or Make Believe? Weezer (The White album) or Weezer (The Red Album)? The Blue Album? The Black album? Never Pinkerton. If any reviewer says that a new Weezer album reminds them a lot of Pinkerton, they are lying.
Back to OK Human. Let’s cut straight to the chase.
Weezer worked with an orchestra for OK Human, and strings were recorded at Abbey Road. The strings are pretty central to the composition of every song on the record. In addition, producer Jake Sinclair opted for a dry, vintage, and punchy drum sound, pervasive throughout the record. You will also hear lots of vintage tape hiss throughout, but that may come from the mellotron, featured on many of the tracks. Compositionally, these things make musical textures possible that you’re not used to hearing on a Weezer album. There is certainly deeper musical dimension to OK Human than most of the band’s previous offerings.
To counter the complex arrangements of violins and cellos, the structures are notably stripped back. It’s as if in writing the songs, they asked themselves “could we get by without repeating that chorus again?” The result is generally short songs – five of the twelve tracks clock in at under two and a half minutes.
Let’s not label the orchestra, the vintage drums, the song constructs, and the tape hiss “gimmicks” (though I’m tempted). We could call them “attributes,” ”components,” or “constructs.” However you refer to them, you can strip them away and what you’d have left are Weezer songs. Some of them, such as “Screens,” are even decidedly riff-based, just like all our old favorites. The riffs are just on pianos and cellos instead of guitars. And though I found the orchestra a little tiring at times, you can’t blame the band for searching for a new way to present what are, at their core, good-ol’ Weezer songs.
Lyrically, it’s what you’d expect – observations of modern-day complications seen through the lens of a socially uncomfortable and emotionally complicated individual. Having said that – Cuomo is maturing, and you can tell. It’s just that now he’s a nerd in his forties instead of a nerd in his twenties. Harsh as that sounds, it’s a perspective that I will always welcome, and that we all need to hear sometimes.
To wrap it up – while OK Human carries with it musical textures that are relatively fresh and exciting for the band, it is still at its heart – for better or worse – a Weezer album.
Our Score 7/10
-Reach James, the author of this review, at jamesunderfire@gmail.com.