‘SZNZ Spring’ Evaluation: Weezer Go Vivaldi-Rock
For a band nonetheless very a lot outlined by the crunchy alt-pop of their very first album (and by the departures from that sound on their traditional follow-up), Weezer has used its unlikely second and third a long time as a band to follow a stunning quantity of eclecticism. For Decade Two (roughly 2003 by 2013), this translated to by no means understanding whether or not a Weezer music can be pop-rock bliss or appalling catastrophe, leaving solely the knowledge that any given album would have a minimum of a number of tracks’ value of every.
However since 2014 or so, the band has appeared much less defiantly scattershot of their experiments. Their albums nonetheless come out at a gentle clip, however they really feel extra sonically and thematically cohesive — with out sacrificing their playfulness.
Acceptable for its debut in a season of blooming, the band’s SZNZ undertaking looks like an outgrowth of the band’s prolific output, and of their newfound focus. Final 12 months, frontman and songwriter Rivers Cuomo introduced plans to launch 4 EPs all through 2022, every timed to a brand new season.
Now that spring and Spring are each right here (right this moment, March twentieth, additionally marks the spring equinox), the undertaking has been scaled again, if solely barely. It’s gone from a quadruple LP to quadruple EP, with seven new songs to kick issues off. (A vinyl-only eighth monitor should wait till subsequent spring, the present estimated launch for the wax model of this just-digital-for-now document. And, in keeping with the band’s PR, they haven’t but begun work on the next SZNZ releases, giving the entire undertaking a crunch-time immediacy.)
Weaving collectively songs of springtime feels like a formidable problem for Weezer, whose previous information have repeatedly evoked (and invoked) the hotter summer time season, in addition to the occasional fall-to-winter despair.