1. Weezer – Everything Will Be Alright In the End
Yes, Weezer’s latest album is my favorite album of 2014 and probably my favorite rock album of the past 5 years. This album makes you forget about the Weezer years from 2002 to now by releasing their best album since 1996’s Pinkerton. Everything past 2002’s Maldroit has been somewhat of a gimmick album with singer Rivers Cuomo experimenting in new genres and trying to make pop albums full of synths and strange cameos (Lil Wayne?) But now the group is back to their roots and you can hear it in the opening track, “Ain’t Got Nobody.” Heavy distortion on the guitars, a Pinkerton-esque riff, simple signature Weezer drums, and then a guitar solo that melts your face off. Sounds like the old Weezer to me. Even if you didn’t like the first single, “Back To the Shack,” you have to admit that it fits the album perfectly. Not only that, Rivers is just confessing that “yah I messed up you guys, sorry for the past decade. Lets rock.” Another album standout is the insanely catchy “Da Vinci” which includes whistling, sing along choruses, and Rivers singing about the girl of his dreams. So basically, its got everything we’ve been missing from Weezer for a while now. If you think they’ve lost their guitar chops than you need to take a listen to Act III of the album, “The Futurescope Trilogy (I. The Waste Land, II. Anonymous, III. Return To Ithaka) The whole 8 minute jam makes you think that the group spent a lot of time listening to Diarrhea Planet and then decided to make something similar. As a life-long Weezer fan this is a positive sign for the future of the group, if they can make a bunch of garbage albums and then come back with this, I think they’ll be fine and now I won’t cringe every time I read about a new Weezer album being released.
