OK Human
\"I knew this day was coming,\" Rivers Cuomo tells Apple Music. \"I\'ve always been such a fan of classical music and opera. And yet, I feel like it\'s overdue, like I just kind of got stuck in this pattern of, \'Okay, we\'re a rock band. This is what we do. We don\'t want to get soft too soon.\' But really getting encouragement from \[producer\] Jake \[Sinclair\], and then just a light went off like, \'Oh, this is going to be great.\'\" After delaying the release of their long-promised shred opus *Van Weezer*, Weezer instead dove into *OK Human*, a 12-track change of pace that features a 38-piece orchestra, no click tracks, no computers, and, most surprisingly, no electric guitar. And the tonal shift matched the pandemic neuroses that fueled Cuomo\'s lyric writing. \"I\'m so anxious about looking around my house and seeing, okay, there\'s one child on that device, there\'s the other child on that device, my wife\'s over there on that device,\" Cuomo says. \"Everyone\'s looking in a different direction at a different device, and that\'s the way things are going. Nothing I can do about it, but I just can\'t help but feel a sense of loss and anxiety about it.\" Those worries take center stage on whimsical tracks like \"All My Favorite Songs,\" \"Playing My Piano,\" and \"Screens,\" while the sprawling orchestration adds drama to \"Numbers\" and \"Bird With a Broken Wing\" as Cuomo stares down his inadequacies. \"I was just feeling pretty irrelevant and passed over and past my prime,\" says the 50-year-old singer-songwriter. \"I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.\" It\'s not all dark clouds, however—Weezer fashions a sliver of optimism with the triumphant \"Here Comes the Rain\" and luscious closer \"La Brea Tar Pits.\" \"Hearing it back for the first time with the orchestra, it\'s like, yeah, those are the chords I wrote, and that\'s the melody I wrote,\" Cuomo says. \"But man, it\'s like seeing in three dimensions for the first time or something. It\'s just gorgeous. And I can\'t believe we haven\'t done it before.\"
Rivers Cuomo pays tribute to his hermit orchestral-pop heroes, name-checking Harry Nilsson, Serge Gainsbourg, and Pet Sounds. But of course, it's all Weezer in the end.
OK Human provokes a Sliding Doors-like moment of consideration for what could have been: Rivers Cuomo as songwriter and producer, rather than normcore pop star.
Fourteen albums in and Weezer are still daring, but to a mixed result
The guitar heroes have – gulp – ditched the guitars for a bold new direction. The result is an evocative, intimate record
Nearly 25 years after their landmark album 'Pinkerton,' the band makes a surprising and effective orchestral pivot.
Weezer's new album, 'OK Human': Group's 14th album, which frontman Rivers Cuomo finished in lockdown.
Can your metaphors be overwrought, or your references too ham-fisted if they’re accompanied by soaring string arrangements?
In case you tuned out sometime around 2005's Make Believe, let's get you up to speed. Weezer have quietly and steadily become one of the mos...
If you had told a Weezer fan in the ’90s that in 2021 Rivers Cuomo would be singing “I’m gonna rock my Audible headphones, Grapes of Wrath” over 20 years later, they would first ask “What’s Audible?” and after you, the time traveler, explain
Remember when Weezer were releasing singles like ‘Beginning Of The End’ and ‘Hero’ to hype up the release of their upcoming
Of all the orchestra/rock band combinations you could imagine, the pairing of Weezer with a full complement of classical players would have to rank as one...
OK Human by Weezer, album review by Adam Williams. The full-length is out January 29th via Crush Music/Atlantic Recordings