Medicine at Midnight

So 2020 was going to be the year of Van Weezer — the big riffs rock album Weezer made as an homage to the metal bands they loved growing up — until, thanks to the global pandemic, it suddenly wasn’t.  The entire time, however, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo was busy at the piano, writing a very different album that referenced another vital musical touchstone of his youth:  The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.  Throughout the summer of Covid-19, he and the band — along with a 38 piece orchestra — chipped away at masked recording sessions until the record was complete.

The result is an album called “OK Human” a cheeky nod to Radiohead’s technophobic future-trip OK Computer, but sounding nothing at all like that record.  Taking the listener bit by bit through parts of Cuomo’s every day, it’s a Technicolor symphonic spree that meditates on how over-and-under-connected we all are, particularly in a year where we can see each other with greater ease, but actually can’t physically be near each other at all.