Weezer - Hurley
Weezer is in a mid-career oscillation, much like Beck’s flip-flop between psych-folk and sloppy hip-hop of the 2000s. But while Beck presented versions of himself which he labored to resolve but which were individually entirely fulfilled platforms for music, Weezer’s poles are opposed more in the fashion of an addict - depressed and sentimentally underconceived on such albums as Raditude (which I confess I couldn’t bring myself to listen to beyond a few seconds from a few songs) followed by manically awesome. But the highs just keep seeming less worth the trouble.
After Maladroit’s first self-consciously metallized peak, the Red album and this new album have each felt more and more artificial, less a new work of music than a repackaging of the things supposedly driving Weezer’s success. The other recent albums are probably best left unconsidered, except to note that for all their ickyness, they seem pitifully genuine.
The task is to know yourself, and then to describe that knowledge. If your description is accessible to others, you are an artist. Since we are one in consciousness, or we share a nature that is fundamentally good, or we are loved by God, or lacking a solution for suffering while recognizing that there is no true reality we yet turn back from that enlightening realization to compassionately join with others - since one or more of these is true, your description is accessible.
Why does Weezer continue to exist? There is clearly a fundamental contradiction splitting the band, preventing it from accomplishing an artistic act. It’s for fun, or for profit, or for both.
Best track is “Time Flies”, which in its saturated low fidelity demonstrates that, indeed, Weezer should be produced by Sleigh Bells for the bestest of the thing each is known for.
1 year ago
