(2022) Weezer – SZNZ: Spring EP
Review:
For a band still very much defined by the crunchy alt-pop of their very first album (and by the departures from that sound on their classic follow-up), Weezer has used its unlikely second and third decades as a band to practice a surprising amount of eclecticism. For Decade Two (roughly 2003 through 2013), this translated to never knowing whether a Weezer song would be pop-rock bliss or appalling disaster, leaving only the certainty that any given album would have at least several tracks’ worth of each. But since 2014 or so, the band has seemed less defiantly scattershot in their experiments. Their albums still come out at a steady clip, but they feel more sonically and thematically cohesive — without sacrificing their playfulness. Appropriate for its debut in a season of blooming, the band’s SZNZ project feels like an outgrowth of the band’s prolific output, and of their newfound focus. Last year, frontman and songwriter Rivers Cuomo announced plans to release four EPs throughout 2022, each timed to a new season. Now that spring and Spring are both here, the project has been scaled back, if only slightly. It’s gone from a quadruple LP to quadruple EP, with seven new songs to kick things off. (A vinyl-only eighth track will have to wait until next spring, the current estimated release for the wax version of this just-digital-for-now record. And, according to the band’s PR, they haven’t yet begun work on the subsequent SZNZ releases, giving the whole project a crunch-time immediacy.) Weaving together songs of springtime sounds like a formidable challenge for Weezer, whose past records have repeatedly evoked (and invoked) the warmer summer season, as well as the occasional fall-to-winter despair. Spring isn’t quite as acoustically minded as last year’s orchestral-pop OK Human album, but that’s probably the recent Weezer it most resembles, with gentler, more acoustic-heavy musicianship than the rollicking Van Weezer (also from 2021) and lyrics that touch upon both simple pleasures and COVID touchstones. More than once, lilting verses give way to an electric-guitar chorus. This lighter version of that familiar Weezer quiet-loud dynamic is the key to opening track “Opening Night,” where Cuomo professes his love for Shakespeare over what sounds like a mandolin (“Shakespeare makes me happy,” he sings in what could almost be called a trill) while interpolating the “Spring” concerto from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, before a chugging chorus takes over. “Opening Night” and immediate follow-up “Angels On Vacation” (which is about literally that) stand as the best and sweetest songs in this batch — despite the latter including an aside of “halos off!” performed with a staccato rhythm that sounds vaguely (and distressingly) like Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” Those little twinges of pop music discomfort still emerge from stabilized latter-day Weezer records; it’s clearly part of the process, and sometimes pays off with an unexpected flourish. That said, Spring has its share of eye-rollers; it alternately recalls the serene renewal of spring and the trailer to a generically uplifting studio comedy from 2013. Does a song called “Garden of Eden” with a chorus about how “we’ll all be strumming guitars in the Garden of the Eden” really need to be appended with multiple refrains of “just like Adam and Eve”? It does not. But the result isn’t any worse than other duff Weezer tracks of recent vintage. “Not worse” is not going to entice many fans, especially those pining for more, well, pining — Pinkerton-style angst that Cuomo tends to express differently these days. 2022 Rivers offers immaculate melodies like “A Little Bit of Love,” sneaking his idiosyncrasies and melancholia into stray lines (“I forgot how to live, how to love, how to give/ How to sing with a mask on my mouth,” in “All This Love”) or musical touches (the little bend in melody at the end of the chorus in closer “Wild at Heart”). Spring has the distinct disadvantage of going first in its Vivaldi-inspired cycle; none of the three subsequent SZNZ releases will be forced to stand quite so alone. As it is, Spring almost feels like an assortment of potential opening tracks. Upon first listen, it may even sound like a series of false starts, resulting in a seven-track collection that couldn’t quite make it to Weezer’s usual ten. But this is where the band’s instincts serve them well; Spring really is more interesting than a one-off single yet not so great that it begs for the full-LP treatment. The little-loved EP format, with its equal space for consistency and experimentation, suits this incarnation of Weezer just fine. And if you’re not a fan, well, there’s always the summer. — CoS
Track List:
1. Opening Night
2. Angels On Vacation
3. A Little Bit Of Love
4. The Garden Of Eden
5. The Sound Of Drums
6. All This Love
7. Wild At Heart
Media Report:
Genre: indie-pop, rock
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
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