Review Summary: Still Cruisin'
I make it no secret that I am a hardcore Weezer fan. They're my number 3 favorite band of all time. I've listened ad nausum, to all of their music, and I can safely say that I've enjoyed all of it, save for a few choice songs. With Weezer's Teal Album however, all I can do is shrug and say "still cruising". While this description applies really well, I mean it in a more literal sense. Way back when, Rivers described his band as "the beach boys with marshall stacks", and I am constantly struck with how accurate this tag is, not just sonically but with their career as well. Rivers is very much like Brian Wilson; quirky, wierd, and forever obsessed with crafting the perfect pop song, and most if not all of Weezer's albums are solid analogies for Beach Boys albums (Pinkerton = smiley smile and Songs from the black hole is SMiLE for example). Which brings me back to my description of the Teal album as Still Cruisin.
Basically, The Teal album is Weezer's still cruisin'. A collection of covers and old standards, led by the band's biggest hit in over a decade, ultimately ending up as a schmaltzy practice in nostalgia. Like Still Cruisin, the teal album is easily its author's worst work, forgettable and completely unnecessary. Save for maybe Happy Together, none of the songs have any of that classic Weezer charm of pitch perfect harmonies backed with punchy, chunky, distorted power chords. All of the songs are straightforward covers what are often so identical to the original, like with Paranoid and Mr. Blue Sky, it feels like a high school cover band covering their favorite classic pop songs at the school's Sadie Hawkins dance. It's just a playlist of the most basic 80s karaoke jamz sung by Rivers Cuomo. So save yourself the half hour of listening this and do yourself a favor by just sticking to the originals. And remember to pray to whatever god you believe in that the black album will be Weezer's That's why God Made The Radio.
