Um, corrosive?
May 14, 2019 4:09 PM   Subscribe

"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 (23 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
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


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


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