Weezer
Pacific Daydream
Release Date: Oct 27, 2017
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
Record label: Atlantic
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Album Review: Pacific Daydream by Weezer
Fairly Good, Based on 17 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
There's an early run of three songs on this, Weezer's eleventh studio album, titled Beach Boys, Feels Like Summer and Happy Hour. That gives you some idea of the escapist power-pop rush this album is aiming for, and it is achieved thanks to soaring falsetto choruses and insistent, upbeat grooves, while references to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Monty Python add to the sense of a band shamelessly wallowing in nostalgia in the same irresistible way they did on their 2014 stomper Back To The Shack. The breeze-block FM rock riffs on Mexican Fender almost sound like a parody, but they work just as well now as they did for The Cars, Cheap Trick or any of Weezer's musical antecedents.
Based on rating 4/5
'Pacific Daydream' is not the album Weezer set out to make. Where most of us find ourselves distracted when undertaking creative endeavours (taking the bins out, doing the washing up, changing bedlinen), Weezer's 'Black' album - a night-time follow-up to last year's impeccable 'White' - quickly became less "Beach Boys gone bad" and more… well, something completely different. The level of expectation on the band's collective shoulders for the past twenty-odd years is, to most, unimaginable.
Based on rating 4/5
It's 23 years since Weezer gave geeks a voice with awkward anthems 'Buddy Holly', 'The Sweater Song' and 'Say It Ain't So'. With that in mind, they could easily have passed by the current generation of pop-punk fans. For them to still be at it, daft as ever, brings to mind the meme-friendly Steve Buscemi 30 Rock scene, where he crashes a high school in a backwards baseball cap and greets students with, 'How do you do, fellow kids?' In their heyday, Weezer managed to distill the spirit of adolescence, and 11th album 'Pacific Daydream' sees them achieving the same feat.
Based on rating 7/10
"Mexican Fender" opens Pacific Daydream with big, crunching arena rock guitars, but that's the only throwback thing about the album. A deliberate reaction to 2016's Weezer (White Album), a record where producer Jake Sinclair encouraged the band to act like it was 1994, Pacific Daydream is a thoroughly modern affair, complete with drum loops and electronic flourishes, all wrapped up in a shiny package. Despite all of this contemporary flair, Weezer aren't exactly pandering to a younger audience.
Based on rating 3.5
Pacific Daydream isn't that far removed from the White Album's foundation, but the way the band arrive there has morphed radically. Instead of the White Album's organic, band-in-a-room feel that surely delighted old-school Weezer fans, its companion piece feels more scientific, a true laboratory creation guided by hitmaker Butch Walker. It's a more experimental approach, allowing Rivers Cuomo and co.
Based on rating 3.4/5
Simplistic guitar playing mixed with unnecessary electronics? Mindless, gargantuan choruses bursting with harmonies? Lyrics packed full of nerdy references and awkward teenager humour? Could it be that Weezer have made… a Weezer album? That's right folks, contrary to the narrative, Pacific Daydream is literally just Weezer 'returning' to where they've pretty much always been. Sure, it's not the ideal follow-up to White, whose diverse and illusion-shattering second half belied deeper ambitions beneath its sunny exterior; nor, thankfully, is it the much-dreaded Radi2ude that the cynical saw coming on the heels on "Feels Like Summer" (although we get pretty close with the genuinely awful "Happy Hour", a nice tropical fruit drink gone sour and mouldy). No, Pacific Daydream is pretty much just fine – 34 minutes of unambiguous, catchy music, competent enough to land on the good side of Weezer's discography without reaching for anything more.
Based on rating B-
For the life of me, I've never been able to tell if Rivers Cuomo grew up too soon or was some kind of late bloomer. It shouldn't matter, but Weezer have always been a band that necessitated a backstory, at least since the turn of the century. In fact, you all know the tale. To purists, the beloved sons of '90s alternative/geek rock put out two of the decade's most beloved albums -- one was love at first listen and the other eventually blossomed into feverish true love (and has since become a cornerstone of music critic apologies) -- and then they disappeared.
Based on rating 3
Weezer return with Pacific Daydream, an album which boasts of being abstract and on another level. For their 11th record, the Los Angeles band were inspired by a Chinese proverb that focuses on a theme of reality and real life becoming blurred. With a starting point such as that, the listener could be forgiven for expecting something experimental; possibly a little psychedelic or even a bit trance-like.
Based on rating 3/5
A fter two decades of underachievement, last year's self-titled "White Album" at least marked a partial return to form for Weezer. Its Beach Boys influences are revisited here, then given a modern R&B twist courtesy of Rivers Cuomo's co-writers, whose credits include Beyoncé, Rihanna and Jessie J songs. The crunching guitar of Mexican Fender, the harmonies of Weekend Woman and (the lazily titled) Beach Boys, and the pop smarts of Feels Like Summer all shine on a front-loaded collection.
Based on rating 3/5
Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo fancied himself a modern-day Burroughs while working on Pacific Daydream, using a computer program to arrange musical fragments into songs. Ultimately, it led to a pretty straightforward Weezer album. "Mexican Fender" kicks off with a riff ripped directly from J. Geils Band's "Love Stinks," retrofitted with a typically nerdy love story about falling for a guitar-slinging computer-programmer physicist ("That's pretty cool for a singer in a band," Cuomo opines).
Based on rating 3.0/5
Marked by its careful commitment to craft, Pacific Daydream is of a piece with every Weezer album this side of Pinkerton. That album's raw emotions and ragged sound made it a cult classic only in subsequent years, and since then the band has dared to adventure outside of their comfort zone only sporadically, instead focusing on honing their gifts for tight hooks and loud, metallic guitars. They've developed a rich catalogue of pop songs, so it's easy to overlook the fact that each Weezer album has its own distinct character and personality--a variation on a theme, perhaps, but a noticeable one.
Based on rating 5/10
With last year's Weezer (White Album), they found themselves on the right side of the critics and were initially supposed to follow it up with the aptly titled Black Album. Instead, they've reappeared with an album influenced by the idea of a "beach at the end of the world". Pacific Daydream, feels just like that; a day dream that, for some reason, doesn't quite sit right.
Based on rating 4.3/10
Long ago, Rivers Cuomo basically split Weezer into two different bands. One of them puts out experimental albums (Pinkerton, Maladroit, The Red Album, etc.), and the other puts out commercially-minded records (The Green Album, Make Believe, etc). At times (The Blue Album, Everything Will Be Alright in the End), Weezer straddle the fence. There's a bit of mad genius to this approach.
Based on rating 4/10
If you dared to believe that Weezer were starting to build something of a late-period streak, Pacific Daydream is here to jolt you awake. Coming hot on the heels of last year's crisp and delightful The White Album, this record marks a radical departure in both style and quality - a return to their unfocused, undercooked post-millenium work, with a new layer of vapidity to boot. Few of us have harboured high hopes for this record, based on the singles we've been drip-fed since spring.
Based on rating 3/10
"It's a hip-hop world, and we're the furniture," sings Weezer leader Rivers Cuomo on "Beach Boys"; it's one of many ham-fisted lines on Pacific Daydream, the band's 11th album, and it illustrates the predicament that the veteran group currently find themselves in. Their signature brand of crunchy power-pop has become dated, and that leaves them with two options: they can stay within their comfort zone and become rock dinosaurs, or they can evolve with the times and risk derailing the modest renaissance they've been enjoying with their ….
Opinion: Satisfactory
Rivers has made an entire career around alienating his fans. Trickling out just enough of what they like and want, while his bottomless mind of hooks is slowly rounded out until all previous character and nuance is gone. But the narrative is not that easy or simple, because 2014’s Everything Will Be Alright in the End and 2016’s White Album in many ways were his best two records since the ones they came twenty years after, respectively.
Opinion: Average
Imagine for a moment that you're Rivers Cuomo. After a two-album experiment producing shiny pop songs, which largely disproves the hypothesis "maybe Weezer should be an EDM band?" you've pivoted back to your band's core appeal: heavy distortion, lyrical disaffection, and a rough-around-the-edges sonic quality. Critics herald the sound as a "return to form," comparing songs written in 2016 to songs you wrote when you were 23.
'Pacific Daydream'
is available now