Weezer
OK Human

I could let it slide this time.

The album ended at the very moment I finished doing push-ups & sit-ups. So I was lying exhausted on the carpet in my room when I suddenly realized that no, what I had just finished listening to was not a crappy album. I listened to the album again, and my impression was confirmed.

Ok Human, the fifteenth album by Weezer, is not a bad album. Sure, it's not even an album suitable for my flaccid bodyweight workouts; but I had just cleaned the house while listening to Living in Darkness by Agent Orange, so I thought my afternoon listening schedule had gone to hell anyway.

It's a small album with many good songs, well-packaged and decently polished. Just consider the orchestral accompaniment of each song: clearly "added afterwards," it's nothing groundbreaking, and the pieces would stand even without it. However, it's a good accompaniment that doesn't clash.

I love listening to music while cleaning. It's a completely mechanical activity, so I enjoy listening to a lot of juicy records that way, without distractions. Once, though, I told Paolino I was listening to Swans while vacuuming. Well Paolino, if you're reading this, know I was joking. But I do put on Agent Orange while dusting.

As we were saying. A little album of good pop-rock songs with enough strings & trumpets to remind you of a lot of talented people from the Sixties. But not a trace of Sixties revival here, there's the usual pop rock that Weezer makes, that pop rock from the Nineties/Two-thousands/Two-thousand-tens and even Two-thousand-twenties, it seems. The usual stuff, but they are Weezer, so they're not bland, and they always have that aura of awkwardness that enhances everything.

We mentioned it, the awkwardness. But the awkwardness is an essential part of Weezer, just like the awkward people who listen to them. And indeed, Ok Human has a bit of that awkwardness. And that's a good thing. Just as it's a good thing it doesn't taste of MEME (God forgive me), like that devil of a covers album, let's call it Teal Album which was bad but entertaining but crap but I listened to it a lot but "such stuff should only be done for charity" (semi quote). Let's also keep in mind that the fifteenth Weezer album was supposed to be Van Weezer, but its release was postponed from 2020 to the spring of '21. Van Weezer. I can't think of anything that simultaneously exudes more awkwardness and more MEME (pronounced rigorously in Italian) than an album titled Van Weezer. Especially when you consider that as soon as its publication was postponed, the real Eddie Van Halen died too. Maybe it will be a beautiful album, maybe it will be a Pinkerton part 2. But it will probably only have Rivers Cuomo making videos mimicking Hot for Teacher.

Also for this reason, I was surprised that Ok Human is pleasant to listen to. Also because from the title it predicted the most terrible things. And yet it turned out to be pleasant, much more compact than the Black Album, not the one by Merdallica, which was hampered by headache-inducing highs and lows, and on par with the only two decent albums they've offered us in the last ten years. Which I will not name.

It's just a good little album, and I think I've written too much.

In case you were wondering, and I know you are, when I exercise, I wear a tight pink leotard.