0
Das vierzehnte Studioalbum ist zugleich ein Surprise-Release. Bereits 2019 äußerte sich Gitarrist Brian Bell zum Album: [Its about] technology and how its running our life. OK Human is unlike anything Ive ever heard, unlike any other type of music and unlike any Weezer music. Mit einer Titelanspielung auf Radioheads futuristisches Album OK Computer bewegt es sich klanglich weitab: das orchestrale Pop-Album, das die persönlichsten Stücke Cuomos umfasst, wurde mit einem 38-köpfigen Streicher- und Bläserorchester aufgenommen.
So 2020 was going to be the year of Van Weezer – the big riffs rock album Weezer made as an homage to the metal bands they loved growing up – until, thanks to the global pandemic, it suddenly wasn’t. The entire time, however, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo was busy at the piano, writing a very different album that referenced another vital musical touchstone of his youth: The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.
Throughout the summer of Covid-19, he and the band – along with a 38 piece orchestra – chipped away at masked recording sessions until the record was complete. The result is an album called OK Human – a cheeky nod to Radiohead’s technophobic future-trip OK Computer, but sounding nothing at all like that record. Taking the listener bit by bit through parts of Cuomo’s every day, it’s a Technicolour symphonic spree that meditates on how over-and-under-connected we all are, particularly in a year where we can see each other with greater ease, but actually can’t physically be near each other at all.
OK Human is also packed to the brim with some of the best, most personal songs Cuomo has written in the last decade, all of which shine brighter and bolder with splashes of string and horn arrangements courtesy of album producer Jake Sinclair and arranger Rob Mathes. It’s hard to imagine any other band who came up in the alt haze of the 90s creating a simply perfect orchestral pop album, but that is exactly what Weezer’s done.