Weezer: SZNZ Revisited

I’m a sucker for a good multi-album project. One of my favorite album runs by any artist is the original Devin Townsend project, specifically the four album run from Ki to Ghost that was conceived as a single artistic statement. Another storied series of albums is Frank Zappa’s Lather, which was broken up into Studio Tan, Zappa In New York, Sleep Dirt, and Orchestral Favorites. The result of this project is a lot more contentious, but I actually like how these albums came out and I believe together they represent one of Zappa’s more creative periods.

Unfortunately, after digging for awhile you start to get into multi album projects that are really mostly flops. An infamous example is Green Day’s Uno, Dos, Tres trilogy. Then there are the companion albums from Metallica (Load/Reload) and Guns n Roses (Use Your Illusion I & II) where the common consensus seems to be that both would have been better off as a single album.

But the multi album flop that might take the cake is Weezer’s SZNZ project. It might not even become the most infamous because the biggest downfall of SZNZ in my opinion was the fact that people seemed to simply stop paying attention about halfway through the project. I won’t get too deep into the postmortem of these albums, as it has been discussed pretty extensively online. But in light of the new self titled Weezer album (which you can listen to Paul and I discuss on Spin It Or Bin it!),¹ I thought it would be fun to revisit the SZNZ project and in particular look at whether the four albums could be condensed into a single solid Weezer album.

The funny thing about SZNZ is that the four albums combined just fall short of 90 minutes, so it could easily be sequenced as a standard double album. But to keep it true to the standard Weezer album, I want to keep it at 10 songs and around 30 minutes. I actually don’t think SZNZ was a bad concept. Four albums that showcase contrasting Weezer styles is a cool idea. A single album that showcases a wide range of styles is even better, especially considering how much their predecessors (OK Human and Van Weezer) leaned into a single tonal vibe. With that in mind, this project presents several challenges:

• Keep a tight ten songs that includes the project’s best material.

• Maintain the stylistic variety that exists across the four “mini albums.”

• Preserve some amount of the album’s conceptual nature.²

With that in mind, here’s what I came up with:

• Opening Night (Spring)

• Records (Summer)

• Iambic Pentameter (Winter)

• What Happens After You (Autumn)

• Angels on Vacation (Spring)

• Lawn Chair (Summer)

• Francesca (Autumn)

• Basketball (Winter)

• Cuomoville (Summer)

• Thank You and Goodnight (Summer)

While I didn’t make this compilation with the intention of keeping a level of equity between albums, it naturally turned out that way with two songs from each album except for Summer which got three.³ Despite being one of the most ridiculous things in the Weezer catalog, I don’t think there is a more appropriate opener to SZNZ than Opening Night. On the other hand, I like how Summer has an intro type track immediately followed by a banger with Records, so I wanted to preserve that as well. Opening Night is a better opening track than Lawn Chair, and Records is a better track two lead single type song than Angels on Vacation. On the other hand, I think Angels on Vacation works as a side closer while Lawn Chair is the perfect mid album interlude. I like the way Summer closes out with the 1-2 punch of Cuomoville and Thank You and Goodnight, and I believe that works well as a closer to the entire project, hence my decision to end the album with these two tracks.

That leaves the Autumn and Winter selections. It’s possible that the last two SZNZ albums contain better songs, but they also feel even less fully fleshed out than anything on Spring or Summer, and you can feel Rivers losing the plot of his own project with these two albums. They feel a lot more directionless and frankly a lot of Winter feels like a demo. But as Paul said on the episode, Weezer’s demos are often better than what you get on the album, so maybe that’s a good thing. Still, the lack of cohesion made it a challenge to figure out which of the songs on the latter two albums would best fit this compilation. So ultimately I decided to go with the songs that spoke to me the most and brought the most amount of uniqueness compared to the Spring and Summer selections.

Every good Weezer album has a waltz, so Iambic Pentameter gets the nod mainly for that reason. The other song that felt memorable to me was Basketball, both kinda have a grimy (dare I say Pinkerton) quality that contrasts the glossy Spring/Summer songs quite well. From Autumn, What Happens After You is a great dance-y track that I think would have made for a good second single if the SZNZ project had been a single album rather than the four mini albums concept. Francesca feels like a Blue leftover, which I mean in the best way possible. I really like the segue from Lawn Chair into Francesca as well. A lot of Weezer fans might be surprised to see Run Raven Run omitted from the album. I’ll be honest, I don’t get the hype around this song at all.

So now we have a standard 10 song Weezer album. The question is, of course, is the album a spin or a bin? I’ll leave it to you decide. Leave a comment, send us a message, but don’t forget to subscribe and check out the Spin It or Bin It podcast for more Weezer content (we cover other bands too).

Footnotes

1. We also talk a bit about SZNZ on this episode as well as on our Weezer draft. ↩

2. As a side note, you can feel the narrative concept of SZNZ melting off the album with each subsequent release. One of the album’s biggest downfalls is Rivers’ inability to commit to the bit. ↩

3. I don’t know if Summer is my favorite, again Paul and I get into this on the pod, but I think there’s a good chance that Summer goes down as the most listenable and consistent overall. It certainly feels the most 21st century Weezer and in retrospect it kinda comes off as a missing link between Pacific Daydream and Black. ↩