Weezer released Weezer (Black Album) only weeks after the mostly eighties-covering Teal Album, but the two records could hardly have less in common. Where the former was essentially a diversion, the latter feels like an attempt to move the band's own songwriting into stranger, darker and more heavily produced surroundings.
The color scheme is appropriate, though not because Weezer have suddenly become a metal band. The darkness here is urban and slightly seedy rather than gothic. Producer Dave Sitek surrounds Rivers Cuomo's melodies with electronic rhythms, thick bass, keyboards and processed guitars, creating an atmosphere far removed from the clean power-pop crunch most closely associated with the band.
"Can't Knock the Hustle" announces the change immediately. A minor-key groove, distorted funk guitar, mariachi-style horns and odd voices drifting around the arrangement make it difficult to place inside any familiar Weezer period. Yet Cuomo's melodic instincts remain unchanged. For all the decoration, the song is still built around a hook that settles into memory almost immediately.
That tension between unfamiliar surfaces and familiar songwriting drives the album. "Zombie Bastards" places chugging guitar and a droning piano beneath an almost perversely sunny melody. "Living in L.A." turns toward dance music without surrendering live instrumentation, and the result feels less like a celebration of Los Angeles nightlife than a picture of a party beginning to curdle around the edges.
The best songs are the ones where Sitek's production and Cuomo's instinct for classic pop composition meet halfway. "High as a Kite" begins with music-box delicacy and lounge-pop textures before distorted guitars broaden the chorus. The melody is strong enough to have survived almost any arrangement, which is precisely why the unusual one works. It is among the finest songs Weezer had recorded in years.
"Piece of Cake" follows with ornate chamber pop, while "The Prince Who Wanted Everything" turns a nursery-rhyme simplicity into something fuzzy and faintly surreal. "Byzantine" is similarly difficult to classify, its angular melody and lounge atmosphere sounding unusual without becoming self-consciously experimental.
Not every experiment is equally successful. "Too Many Thoughts in My Head" has plenty happening around its central melody—percussion, guitar detail, keyboards—but the verse never feels entirely resolved, even if the chorus eventually gives the arrangement the lift it needs. "California Snow", meanwhile, ends the record under a dense layer of processing and oversized bass. Its oppressive mood is effective on its own terms, though it leaves the album on a strangely heavy emotional note.
That darkness also reaches the lyrics. Cuomo's writing is more profane and more openly jaded than usual, which fits the record's visual and sonic palette. Whether the black cover, the altered language and the atmosphere were conceived as parts of the same statement almost matters less than the consistency with which they reinforce one another.
Weezer have spent much of their career confusing anyone who expects a stable definition of what Weezer is supposed to sound like. The melodic vocabulary remains identifiable, but the arrangements surrounding it can change dramatically from one record to another. Here, Sitek gives the band a set of textures capable of making even familiar Cuomo chord changes feel slightly alien.
Weezer (Black Album) is uneven in the way many of the band's records are uneven, but its best moments come from genuine curiosity rather than novelty for its own sake. After nearly a quarter-century of colored album covers, Weezer finally reached black and found another useful backdrop for the same peculiar melodic mind.
GENRE: Alternative rock
RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2019
PRODUCED BY: Dave Sitek
LABEL: Crush Music / Atlantic Records
RATING: 7/10