Rivers is all about that bass.
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Dan MacRae: Weezer are a tricky proposition in 2014. What do we want from these guys and would we know it if we got it? “Back to the Shack” plunks Weezer in that weird zone between self-effacing and self-parody where they’re trying to go the triumphant “WE’RE BACK AND READY TO BE A GOOD ATTENTIVE ROCK DAD AGAIN!” anthem route but with less than sexy results. Like, I don’t need dignity to radiate out of Rivers & Co. but maybe a lumbering nostalgia dry hump isn’t the way to go. Shit, at that stage you instantly morph into Chubby Checker decked out in denim for a budget casino brunch performance of “The Twist.”
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Edward Okulicz: Rivers Cuomo has written a slashing, hook-ridden ode to better times, younger times, less jaded times, and sung it with conviction and inspired you to punch the air and also think of the years when you were younger, firmer and rockin’ out big-time and makes you really feel 1994, man. Oh wait, I’m thinking of “The Good Life.”
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Patrick St. Michel: The narrative goes that Weezer have been a steadily sinking ship since 2000, but that doesn’t really capture how out-there Rivers Cuomo has become. He developed a twisted confidence…starting with The Red Album…that has resulted in some of the most baffling music of the past decade. Just listen to this shit. “Back to the Shack” is Rivers cracking open a cold one, staring at his band’s last decade-plus of work and then officially embracing lame-dad status. This is part alternative Weezer creation myth, Rivers imagining Weezer…Weezer!…as a band that was ever capable of “raising hell,” and part half-assed apology for all the bad music that promises the band playing “like ’94,” but just sounds like “Beverly Hills.” He takes a shot at, like, American Idol while he’s here because why not? Weezer promises a return to ’90s form, but “Back to the Shack” is Weezer Weezering on into middle age.
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Alfred Soto: Approaching forty, Rivers Cuomo gets ruminative over power chords, remembering 1994 when “stupid singing shows” didn’t exist. More and more he resembles Tom Petty, that boomer rockist Ronald Reagan, articulating reactionary ideas with rhetorical precision and metaphorical wigginess (I don’t get his radio line, like, at all). If “back to the shack” is a sex metaphor he ain’t telling but he’ll let his buzzing guitar suggest it. Wouldn’t you know it — Petty released a similarly themed tune in 1994.
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Katherine St Asaph: If you were that anti-2014 you wouldn’t enjamb “let’s turn up / the radio.” Nor would you claim that pandering to a fanbase so large and fervent they line-edit your lyrics is a path to obscurity, rather than a Palmer-proven business model. It’s not so much that these are bad choices; it’s that as stupid as those singing shows assume their viewers are, it’s not nearly as stupid as Weezer assumes their listeners are to swallow this. Also, judging by the intro Cuomo’d be better off going back to the drunk tank.
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Anthony Easton: God, remember when Rivers Cuomo had a pop sensibility and was not contemptuous about everything and anything? At least disco is smarter and more fecund in how it plows the fields of its own nostalgia. At least the singing shows have given us Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. More than what 1994 gave us.
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Josh Winters: As tedious and torturous as being forced by your friends to watch their band practice.
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Brad Shoup: Rivers Cuomo mealymouthing hip-hop phrasing is his own personal Tourette’s at this point. He can’t help it, not even in a song that pays lip service to the idea that Weezer (which = Cuomo, clearly and explicitly) just wanted to be Crüe all along. The boy can’t help himself. He’s always played decent lead, written terrible lyrics, and except for one glorious Green Period, devised jagged hooks when they were even there. Excepting the intro, this is essentially “Beverly Hills” with Ocasek leaning (blessedly) on a synth. It’s the one thing that marks any kind of return, even if it’s just Return of the Rentals.
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Megan Harrington: Maybe rockism isn’t dead. Maybe once named it can never die. But if your brand’s loudest voice is an aging dweeb whining “I forgot that disco sucks” then you’re definitely in the sort of fallow period when politicians want your vote and everyone else forgets you’re still alive.
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