The beloved pop-rock singer plans to release two albums in 2021.
The first of these, OK, Human, explores the urgent need for people's current lack of interpersonal communication and connection. Lead singer Rivers Cuomo said.
Text: Zhang Mou Editor: Peach
Rivers Cuomo has a lot of talent, but predicting the future is not one of them.
The fifty-something bearded Weser lead singer sat between his computer and piano at his home in Santa Monica, explaining why a series of unforeseen circumstances delayed the release of the heavy metal album Van Weezer by a full year, in between which they released a new orchestral pop album, OK Human.
It all started in 2017, when Cuomo sat in the same position as he does now, at his piano, under his hanging garden with some horror vines, and began the production of what he called a "weird, personal, non-commercial, no big guitar album."
"OK Human" album cover
Just as the album was about to be completed, Cuomo learned with drummer Patrick Wilson, rhythm guitarist Brain Bell, and bassist Scott Shriner that they had been placed on the Hella Mega Tour, a massive tour of stadiums around the world, accompanied by veteran faces like Green Day and Fall Out Boy. The date is set for March to August 2020.
Cuomo said their enthusiasm for facing tens of thousands of spectators on the road was doused by a disturbing reality: "Okay, we just made the kind of album that was least suitable for making before the stadium tour. ”
At the time, it seemed sensible: The band set aside this album about introspection and instead wrote and recorded Van Weezer— an air guitar-themed album ready for a stadium tour inspired by the Kiss, Black Sabbath, Metallica, and of course Van Helen, which they loved as a teenager.
But the pandemic came, "Okay, we made another album that was most unsuitable for a time when no one was watching the show, how do we release a gymnasium rock album at that time?" ”
Van Weezer was originally scheduled for release in spring 2020, but was therefore postponed to May 2021, in line with the postponed Hella Mega Tour date, when the first performance was scheduled for Vienna on June 9.
But considering that many of the biggest summer events — such as the Glastonbury Festival — have been forced to be cancelled, while unbelievable, Cuomo said at least he was told the tour would still take place.
"My agent just told me that yesterday the US announcer still said that the tour would take place." He shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly and said he had given up predicting the future, "It may change, but I don't have other plans for this summer." ”
Van Weezer album cover
The release of Van Weezer was uncertain, and Cuomo seized the opportunity to return to the band's original album— an album that had inexplicably grown more and more pleasant during the production process. "This may be the impetus for this album," Cuomo said. "This album is about being isolated, being alienated, being isolated — just right for now."
The title of the band's fourteenth studio album, OK Human, is an affirmation and homage to Radiomaster's 1997 release of the classic OK Computer, which presciently referred to tech phobia at the time.
Cuomo said that when he first started writing the album, he realized that he was quite anxious about the speed of technological progress, and he was worried that the unchecked power of the internet would have an impact on gene editing and biological science. "It all seems to make people question what it means to be called human."
When Cuomo began to think about how future musicians would do their jobs, he felt the same anxiety that influenced the album's unique musical style.
"Over the years, players have played real instruments with their bodies, plucked metal strings, and hit wooden drums, but in reality people are increasingly reluctant to listen to and care about these things," he said.
"Radio commanders in the mid-'90s seem to be exploring how they should relate to technology. They were indie rock bands like us, but they experimented with all sorts of loops and effects to create a futuristic tech landscape that was utterly shocking at the time. ”
"There was no electric guitar on this album, and it was an amazing first for the Band Wither."
—Rivers Cuomo
"Now, decades later, I don't think I have those fantasies about technology anymore. This is already commonplace. ”
Instead, Cuomo decided to throw away the computer in the same way that the Luddites opposed technological progress, and added a symphony orchestra (like the strings in OK Computer, recorded at the Abbey Road Studio in London).
"The fact that the electronic element was banned on this album, not even an electric guitar, was an amazing first for the Band with Weser." Cuomo notes, "Every corner of the world we live in is occupied by technology, and so are musicians, so it seems appropriate to have a little reversal in the title of Radiomaster's album." ”
An album without an electric guitar — arguably the first of the band's three-decade career — is entirely the opposite of Van Weezer, another album that The Wethers promised to release in 2021.
When Eddie van Helen died in October 2020, the band announced that they would dedicate the album to the guitarist, in gratitude for "accompanying our youth and inspiring this album with unparalleled music".
Como 2019 live performance
Cuomo said he was a man who "really grew up in the wilderness," and in northern Connecticut, Van Helen's music became a signal line for the outside world. "There were no concerts, and certainly no internet," he recalls, "and it was hard to get information about the music you loved." ”
Imagine the excitement of 12-year-old Rivers Cuomo, who was only a month away from becoming a teenager, recording on a handheld tape recorder the 1983 US Festival in California, which had a powerful lineup of top rock bands like The Clash, David Bowie and Van Helen.
What thrilled the prospective teenager Cuomo most was Van Helen's finale metal day, which included the band Mötley Crüe, the Saints of Judah and Ozzy Osbourne.
"I can hear it over and over again," he added, adding that the tape constituted his earliest and deepest memory of Van Helen. "One of the highlights of that cassette tape was that I was wandering around with the microphone and following them backstage before and after the show. You can hear them talking, warming up and so on. Although it's just a glimpse into the life of a rock star, I already feel very excited. ”
Cuomo isn't the kind of person who makes it feel like he'll replicate the careers of Van Helen, David Lee Roth, or Oz Ospen. After the Band of Weser successfully released their first self-titled album with a blue cover, he suspended the band and went to Harvard University to study English literature, and in 1996, while Cuomo was reading, the band recorded a second album, Pinkerton.
In 2020, Cuomo took CS50, a popular online course for introductory computer science at Harvard University, where he built an app called Drivetimes, which had a band schedule on it, and a website to sell bundles of recordings and demos from his home.
(Both were successful.) Even though he had finished the course, he said he needed to hire a few Eagle Ear monitors to scrutinize all the recordings in his home because he had accidentally sold a few clips of his daughter's doctor giving him medical advice and his wife talking about the family. ）
Given that he's spent writing songs and programming all his past, it seems like the long lockdown of 2020 hasn't changed Como's life much — even if the Hella Mega Tour has been shelved.
People who are not introverts can also find resonance on this album because they have been forced to live this way due to the epidemic.
"I'm a really introvert, so it's fun to write and code songs at home all the time." "I have a family and my parents live next door, so this is actually my ideal life," he said. I think people who aren't introverts can also find resonance on this album because they're forced to live like this because of the pandemic. ”
However, he also misses some social occasions. The album's second song, "Aloo Gobi," was written in 2017 and depicts a classic date between Cuomo and his wife Kyoko — an unworthy cauliflower dish and a casual movie going on in a local theater. In the lyrics, Cuomo complains that it is a "routine" that is "stupid and boring." Things are uncertain.
"The irony of this song is unbelievable." He shook his head and said. "I was just tired of my social life when I wrote this song, and I took everything for granted. Now that thought is gone, I really miss it. The Joker turned out to be myself. ”
A song that records an ordinary night turns out to be a kind of nostalgia for the loss of the world a few years later, but Cuomo said that when he wrote the song, he may have just wanted to make an album like OK Human a reality, but he exhausted the desire to learn the importance of community and gratitude in advance, which is what many of us have learned in this epidemic.
"The soul of this song is a wish, a true wish, and I want to have an important task in my life and be surrounded by a group of people who can inspire me," he said. In the world of creating this album, I felt like I could achieve those goals. It was as if we were exploring something worth exploring. ”
OK Human was released on January 29, 2021.
REF：
https://www.nme.com/features/weezer-ok-human-van-weezer-hella-mega-tour-fall-out-boy-green-day-2864359