There is a method in the field of organizational leadership
called “appreciative inquiry” whereby a company or institution examines what it
does well in order to achieve maximum effectiveness or reclaim its “essence”. The practice is usually implemented when the
company in question has found itself in a time of decline or lost market value
and works on the assumption that envisioning what the organization looked like
when it was its best will inspire it to attain that status again. All of this is
a convoluted way of saying that rather than focusing on what the “brand” did
wrong, they focus on what they did right.
A couple spins of the latest Weezer album, “Everything Will Be Alright
In The End” leaves you with the distinct impression that Rivers Cuomo is not
only familiar with the concept, but is following a similar path. After years in the wilderness (and several
confounding albums of increasingly diminishing returns), the band has embraced
the hallmarks of the “classic Weezer sound” – harmonized guitar solos, hooks
the size of skyscrapers, Cuomo’s adenoidal whine, all of it spit-shined by Ric
Ocasek’s hermetically sealed production.
And, to a point, it kinda works.
Opener “Ain’t Got Nobody” sounds musically like a particularly
inspired “Pinkerton”-era b-side, and there are no less than five good-to-great
songs on the album – Cuomo’s reflection on what makes Weezer work pays off in
spades on the catchy as hell “Lonely Girl”, the sweet back-and-forth vocals
with Best Coast’s Betheny Cosentino on the razorblade-wrapped-in-candyfloss “Go
Away”, and the wounded survivor’s anthem “Cleopatra” (which may be the best
song the band has written in a decade-and-a-half). Hell, the band even manages a decent fairweather-audience-as-enemy
metaphor with “The British Are Coming”.
Make no mistake, though, there are some clunkers here. Broken down into roughly three categories (“songs
about girls who done me wrong”, “songs about the dad who done me wrong” and “songs
about the fans who loved and left us”), the album struggles for a thematic arc
and concept that it doesn’t remotely come close to pulling off. And, always the Achilles’ heel, Cuomo’s
lyrics here come across in places as particularly dumb (though there is nothing
here as patently stupid as “Where’s My Sex?” or “The Girl Got Hot”, so they
have them going for them…which is nice). First single, “Back to the Shack” tries too
damn hard at being cheeky, apologetic and self-referential; and the sour-grapes
“I’ve Had It Up To Here” features this particularly cringe-worthy attack: “Don't wanna
compromise my art for universal appeal / Don't wanna be mass consumed
/ I'm not a happy meal”. Ugh…really???
The band redeems itself, however, with de facto closer, “Foolish
Father”, which starts out as a standard paean for understanding from a dad who
made mistakes but breaks into a glorious group vocal in the last 40 seconds, a
massed-choir of voices singing the album’s title phrase over and over. And this is ultimately why the band matters
to so many people – despite its corniness, there is something comforting about being
reminded that we are in this together, and perhaps if we believe it and give
ourselves over to the moment, everything actually WILL be alright in the
end. And that is something worth
believing in. (The album actually ends
with the three-part, 7-plus minute wankfest “The Futurescape Trilogy, but it
acts as more as a coda to the album proper and doesn’t fit this narrative…so
fuck it…)
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