Weezer – ‘The White Album’ Review
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There’s no one band in a stranger situation in 2016 than Weezer. They’re a band who everyone knows the name of, a band who’ve most probably written at least a couple of songs you love, and they’re a band who most definitely hold a claim to being one of – if not the – single most important influence on the more introspective pop punk bands of today. Despite all that though, they’ve not actually done anything worthy of their legacy for about a decade.
Despite that, it seemed like both Weezer die-hards and casual observers alike had their interest piqued when ‘Do You Wanna Get High?’ dropped as the first ‘White’ single towards the end of last year. Those die-hards were quick to warn caution, however. They’d been here before. They’d let themselves get excited about a new Weezer record and been handed a ‘Raditude’ or a ‘Hurley’. Thankfully though, their patience has finally been rewarded – and in a huge way.
‘California Kids’ opens the album with glorious, hook-laden aplomb before giving way to ‘Wind In Our Sail’ – which might just hold a claim to being the band’s best chorus since 2001 – and just like that, all is forgiven. That’s before getting to the album’s crowning glory, too. There’s a four track run in the middle of the album of ‘Do You Wanna Get High?’, ‘King of the World’, ‘Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori’, and ‘L.A. Girlz’ that’s strong enough to put the entire contemporary pop punk scene on notice.
There are a few questionable moments, it has to be said. ‘Thank God For Girls’ is an odd, almost jarring song (not helped by the fact that the word ‘cannoli’ is used as a lyric on two separate occasions on it) and the album’s final two tracks feel slightly hollow in comparison to what comes immediately before them, but that’s splitting hairs. This is a very good Weezer record.
Finally, the people too young to have been there when Weezer were at their peak (I’m cool as hell, but even I wasn’t ready for ‘Pinkerton’ at three years old) have a top-tier Weezer album to call their own. Finally, people who got into the Joyce Manors and the Modern Baseballs first have a reason to go, ‘oh that’s why my favourite bands worship the ground Rivers Cuomo walks on’. This isn’t ‘Blue’ or ‘Pinkerton’, but after a prequel trilogy of ‘Raditude’, ‘Hurley’, and ‘Everything Will Be Alright In The End’, Weezer, with the White Album, have finally given us their own ‘The Force Awakens’.
