Pacific Daydream, the 11th studio album from alternative band Weezer, released on Oct. 27, 2017. This album came with a few hit singles, as most of Weezer’s albums. The main single, “Feels like Summer” can be heard frequently on pop radio stations; the song was released in late March of this year. At the time it was a great summer song, but it feels mostly out of place with the rest of the fall-time album.

The style of Weezer’s most recent album differs slightly from the raw rock sound they’ve been known for in the past. Weezer’s preceding album worked as a transition into this new pop sound complete with sing-along choruses and layered vocals. Along with the more mainstream sound, the band has lost a good deal of their fanbase due to the change. The album debuted at 23 on the Billboard top 200, the worst of any Weezer album. Pinkerton, the band’s second album, was their only other offering that failed to reach the top ten.

The overall opinion on the album is that it’s a good pop-rock album, but not a good Weezer album; there are expectations to be had for a Grammy-winning, iconic band. You expect a specific sound from a band with a consistent style. When listening to the single off of this album on the radio, I thought it was a fun jam, and it sounded nice, but I was shocked to learn that it was Weezer; it didn’t sound like them at all. I’m not one to be against a change in sound from artists; bands like Fall Out Boy have undergone dramatic changes in style, but their music still sounds like Fall Out Boy with the same vocals and lyrical style. This album for the most part gives no indication that it’s from Weezer at all, and aside from the single, there aren’t any super memorable songs. The only reason the single is memorable is because it’s played on the radio constantly.

Despite what I’ve been saying, Pacific Daydream is not a bad pop-rock album. There are some fun bops, but there aren’t a lot of raw instrumentals or anything else that’s reminiscent of Weezer’s usual style. However, their goal in the first place was to not sound like themselves. Lead singer and guitarist Rivers Cuomo described the album as “The Beach Boys gone bad,” and that the album was almost called “The Black Album” to work as a counterpart to “The White Album,” another recent release. I can say elements of that mentality definitely came through. Aside from the main single, the lyricism in a lot of the songs is misled by the fun upbeat sound.

While looking through the lyrics, there seemed to be a theme about the aftermath of summer love. The first songs of the album are about meeting a girl and falling in love, messing around in the summer sun, and then the lyrics start to get darker. The songs become about jealousy, cheating and wandering eyes, and then the songs become about other women and romances that come and disappear just as quickly. The rest of the album becomes about the aftermath of the romanticized “summer fling” and definitely fits the “Beach Boys gone bad” theme the band was going for.

Overall, Pacific Daydream is a solid album that deserves a listen and more radio play beyond the one single, but I don’t think it should be included in the Weezer hall of fame.