Weezer: OK Human Review

I’ve heard great things about Weezer. I’ve heard one or two songs from the California alternative pop/rock band, but I hadn’t sat down to dissect one of their albums prior to OK Human.

I did a bit of research into the band’s past history with other critics, and needless to say, they haven’t been consistent. Save two or three albums sprinkled in the middle of their discography, the receival of Weezer’s albums has been consensually mediocre at best.

I walked into this album expecting something of decent quality to at least reach a 6/10 level on my rating scale. The name of the album suggests something inspired by Radiohead’s OK Computer, and the tracklist suggests Beatles with the 11th track, “Here Comes the Rain.” But alas, I let my hopes get too high. From the start of track one, the bar for my expectations dropped so low, I couldn’t imagine it could get worse.

The opening track isn’t such a terrible song, but I bring back my criticisms of Paul McCartney’s “Find My Way”: the melody of the song is so dull and emotionless is makes you want to throw up with how obvious it is. Unlike McCartney, the melody does offer a change that makes it playable, but if there’s a reason I don’t want to review this album, it’s this track. It goes up the scale like typical middle school band fashion, and then back down, tying it up in an annoyingly innocent finality, like tying everything up in one neat little bow.

Most of the songs on this record sort of bleed into one another, which works well for some songs more than others. And thank goodness (at least for the first half of the album) the songs gradually grow better. The next section of the album gives me the vibes of a mellowed out Fall Out Boy or a rapless Twenty One Pilots. The whoas in “Aloo Gobi” are nice to sing along to, and “Grapes of Wrath” (probably the best song on the record) has a really good beat that I can get behind. The song is as sweet as a grape with its lyrics, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that the band has a sponsor in Audible for this one.

One of my biggest complaints about Weezer as a whole is that the lead singer, Rivers Cuomo, has terrible vocal technique. You can hear it specifically in the bridge of “Grapes of Wrath” where Cuomo is straining to reach the notes. “Numbers” is the first song where the falsetto pitches sound clean. The lyrics could be interpreted in multiple ways, and the string composition was brilliant in the bridge. But the bridge overall is the weakest part of the song due to the lyrics seeming out of place, like a square peg in a round hole. “Every nail needs a hammer,” but trying to fit so many syllables into one line by breathing out the last one just isn’t going to jam itself in with or without ol the use of a hammer.

Interestingly enough, “Playing My Piano” doesn’t include a piano as a lead. The song starts out great, and I get excited for a Panic! at the Disco type ballad, but then the verse comes in and like a bulldozer completely wiped that away. Not to mention “Mirror Image” barreling in with another unfitting mood that makes it seem like they wrote a verse and chorus and a bridge separately and stitched them together. “Screens” continues this trend by ending before it could hit a climax – it ends right before it could hit a bridge or chorus.

With the way the songs checkerboard from a good song to a bad song, the record seems even more like a giant patchwork quilt – they had a ton of little ideas and stitched them into one record. There is little rhyme or reason to the flow of the tracklist, and if they had released this as an EP, it would have worked fine.

Not to mention so many of these songs that seem to familiar. I swear I have heard “Bird With a Broken Wing” before, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. “Here Come the Rain” certainly teases a reference from The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” but where one song is a sweet, whimsical melody, the other is a mediocre show tune or children’s pop song. If you don’t believe me, imagine a song from your favorite musical and skip to the last chorus of the song. Rising in pitch with pauses in between each note that lasts twice as long as normal, and then ending with a burst on the highest note. Now try to imagine what that choreography would like like. I’m cringing already.

“Dead Roses” was the last breath of fresh air for OK Human. And unfortunately, like “Screens,” it ends before it can reach a climax. It is an unfinished idea cheated out of its time and left as a forgettable track hidden in the middle of the second half, sandwiched between two other tracks that don’t serve it justice. “La Brea Tar Pits” isn’t a terrible song, but the mediocrity is so strong, I am left wishing the album would just end already.

And that’s the best way to sum up Weezer in a nutshell: mediocre. Their music is neither pop nor rock – they stand on a middle ground between the two being an alternative sound of both. I might have to check out the albums everyone praises so highly sometime, but after the deceit of OK Human, I’m going to have to take a break before I can listen to them again.

Overall Rating: 5.7/10