Um, corrosive?

May 14, 2019 4:09 PM

"I got tired of waiting for Weezer to release another good album so I made one myself." That'd be Zerwee, a 4-song EP by not-actually-Weezer musical person Billy Cobb.
posted by cortex (24 comments total)

I'm a sucker for anthemic power-pop so this is fun.

Now someone do The Descendents.
posted by sjswitzer at 4:15 PM on May 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Wasn't Weezer just kinda doing the Descendents already
posted by zerolives at 4:26 PM on May 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

I think this is what every garage band was trying to do when I was in highschool. So...The Get Up Kid's Something to Write Home About? Yup. Still cool.
posted by es_de_bah at 4:31 PM on May 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

it occurred to me that this is a good place to share the Pete Holmes interview with Rivers Cuomo, wherein they explore the psychological fallout that came from Pinkerton under-preforming. There's a reason Weezer doesn't make that many Weezer records.
posted by es_de_bah at 4:47 PM on May 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Wasn't Weezer just kinda doing the Descendents already

If this were so, there's no way I could have avoided being a fan! As it turns out, I hear them alternating between a poppy Meat Puppets (minus twang, add synth) and a poppy Built to Spill. I don't listen to them, but I just checked out about 15 songs and I couldn't find a way to break this theory.

Here, Zerwee sounds to me like The New Pornographers, which is totally fine.
posted by rhizome at 5:07 PM on May 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

Lyrics via Genius. This is dead on and great.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:12 PM on May 14, 2019

I hear them alternating between a poppy Meat Puppets

Has no one done an FPP about the Meat Puppets? Search says "probably not." This is a crime.
posted by sjswitzer at 5:24 PM on May 14, 2019 [7 favorites]

This is your superhero origin story, get on it with the crime-fighting.
posted by cortex at 5:25 PM on May 14, 2019 [6 favorites]

There have been a couple Meat Puppet posts, but not really about the band.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:29 PM on May 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh, man. The Meat Puppets are... complicated. I don't think I can do it. (But someone has to.)
posted by sjswitzer at 5:37 PM on May 14, 2019

Can we have a Get Up Kids post?
posted by gucci mane at 5:39 PM on May 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

The riffs and melodies are on point! But the lyrics sound like derivative shitty my-first-teen-band pop-punk garbage sorry. The Blue Album is magic to me because of how earnest it sounds so there's a sense of romance and nostalgia and awkward coming of age in the songwriting and it sticks for me so hard. This just sounds like goofy trash "let's see how quick I can poo out emo lyrics y'all" it made me cringe and kind of ruins it.

(Then again I wonder if this is how the Blue Album might sound to someone who never heard it before.)
posted by windbox at 5:42 PM on May 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh man nvm just saw in the YouTube description that he's describing it as "Greta Van Weezer" and it makes so much sense now, changed my mind that's a perfect description and I respect the shit out of this
posted by windbox at 5:47 PM on May 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'll endeavor to start putting a Meat Puppets post together after I finish the MeFi Music Swap this week.
posted by rhizome at 5:58 PM on May 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

the lyrics sound like derivative shitty my-first-teen-band pop-punk

...Soooo...
Like Weezer?

I also love Weezer. Or at least some Weezer. Ok just their Platonic ideal but still.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:34 PM on May 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

Eh, nah. Accent not Long Island enough, guitar solos not screechy and crunchy enough. Weezer still does the stuff you like, y'all: Do You Wanna Get High?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:39 PM on May 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is really good.
posted by Damienmce at 7:27 PM on May 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

robotvoodoopower ....that harsh squeeze compression is what's been killing Weezer for at least a decade. The cool gimmick of the Blue Album was being that clean while sounding dirty. The squeeze makes it sound like they're trying to do Greenday's Brain Stew. I won't provide a link to that song. Because it's already recreated three times a minute on the radio as if it were a classic rock song. It is, in fact, the destroyer.
posted by es_de_bah at 9:31 PM on May 14, 2019

=this is good=
posted by Gordafarin at 1:20 AM on May 15, 2019

do you like the sound of scratchier pinkerton-era weezer?
ever wish that their songs were about half as long?
are you sick of cuomo's shit?

my friend, you need tony molina's dissed and dismissed (bandcamp). everything you love about weezer & none of the other stuff!!! the whole album is <12 minutes, so what do you have to lose?!?
posted by yaymukund at 3:14 AM on May 15, 2019 [4 favorites]

wow some things really hit the right note: the little staccato note that interrupts the arpeggio intro in the first song; the tremulous quaver to the vocals; the slightly washed-out picture of a loner for the album cover; the very straight-melodic guitar solo - it's all very on the nose.
posted by entropone at 5:41 AM on May 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

poppy Built to Spill
Poppy was right in Built to Spill's wheelhouse (Girl)
no ( Lie for a Lie)

And this doesn't sound like Weezer to me - it starts out too power-pop, the vocals too emo, and I've personally always thought of Weezer lyrics as containing a lot of slang snippets that only work as 'Weezer lyrics' - say 'What's with these homies dissing my girl' out loud - it sounds like you are 70, and it did back in 1995 too. Reminds me of maybe like The Get Up Kids or Fountains of Wayne.

Also - it may be 2019 and digital music is everywhere - but Youtube is the only one with Meat Puppet's Sam - neither Amazon nor Apple have it as a digital download. In my opinion by far their best song and the lyrics and guitar phrasing are amazing - instead of umpteen digital diaries about in-studio work of The Beatles, Pink Floyd, or Steely Dan - I'd love to hear the story of this song, which from a technical perspective bests any track I've ever heard by any of those three.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:28 AM on May 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

Had I heard it out of context I would have never known these weren't weezer songs.
posted by French Fry at 9:13 AM on May 15, 2019

I'm listening to this, and... y'all, there was a period of time where it felt like there were a million bands doing exactly this

Not disliking it! But y'all, this is what life was like. Is this the Getup Kids? Is it Nerf Herder? I don't know
posted by billjings at 11:03 AM on May 15, 2019