Weezer
“I can’t give you anything else. They are kinda blah.” – Al
“I have no interest in emo. I’m all about rap metal.” – Rivers Cuomo
Albums Reviewed:
The people have spoken! Months ago!
And now I finally get around to answering them! With WEEZER!
Hee! So what do I think of
Weezer? Well, I think they used to be a
pretty darn good band back in the mid-nineties, and now, in the early naughties,
they still don’t suck dick like many of their rivals, but they’re just
sorta pretty OK, instead of, you know, good. I have enjoyed their debut album for many
years, and enjoy their second record, Pinkerton, to a good
degree as well, though not quite as much as their first. When Pinkerton (unjustifiably)
became a total bomb, however, that put a death knell on the idea that Weezer
could ever be real good or creative again.
Lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Rivers “
Lineup! Yee-haw!
From left, we have guitarist-who’s-not-Rivers Brian Bell, one of their
bassists (They’ve had, like, three I think…I believe that’s original
bassist Matt Sharp, but me no so sure. In
any case, Sharp played on their first two records, Mikey Welsh on the Green
Poop Album, and Scott Shriner on Malapropism), Rivers, and drummer Patrick Wilson. Musically, this band is about as interesting
as a cold sore, and their reason for existence lies in Rivers’ nice, non-Geddy
Lee-sounding voice and songwriting, which was consistently good a decade ago,
and now is not, but still isn’t that bad.
Unless you’re talking solely about the Green Poop Album, that is, in
which case it sucks my ass.
And, onto the reviews!
naterules1992@aol.com writes:
Your Weezer reviews are shit.
I can't fucking belive you don't like "Only In Dreams". That song is
awsome. It deffinatley bumps the album up to a 9. Even if "Only in
Dreams" was bad, "Say it Ain't So" is better than "Buddy
Holly". Any ways, the "Pinketon" and "The Green Album"
reviews are fine. Also, "Maladroit" is an 8, and is as good if not
better than "Pinkerton". I have no valid reason for saying this, except
a lot of the songs you don't like on that album I like.
Weezer (Blue Album) (1994)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Buddy Holly”
Damn good
debut album. Not great, but damn
good, definitely their best (Don’t let Pinkerton fans tell you
otherwise! They’re WRONG! But that album’s good, too), and if they ever
top this thing, I hereby proclaim that I will shave off my pubes. Why can I make that claim? Because it won’t happen! And because I will NEVER, EVER, EVER put a
razor anywhere near my cock-n-balls. Why
the hell would anyone do this? Are they
that vane? Or just stupid? Whatever.
Fucking retard metrosexual douchebag pricks.
Anyhoo, the
record’s darn good, and it sounds just as fresh now as it did in 1994, even if
I’m only gonna give it an 8, mainly because the next time Weezer comes up with
a really interesting guitar part that’s not in “El Scorcho” will be the
first. Thus, because they’re very, very,
VERY uninteresting guitarists, bow down and kiss Jesus “Mel Gibson” Christ’s
disgusting, 2000-year-old corpse feet that Rivers is a pretty good songwriter
with a neat sense of humor. We’ve got
some great tuneage here! And some cool
lyrics! Funny lyrics! The Kiss and “dungeon master” references in
“In the Garage” (good song) are a hoot, for instance, as is the “You’ll take
your car to work, I’ll take my boooooaaaard!” line in “Surf Wax America” (good
song), as well as the “HEEEAAAAART-BEEEEEAAAAAAT” sections of “
But I digress. This is SOOOO the best album Weezer have put out from a pure songwriting perspective that it’s not even worth discussing. Their others all have a few stunners (on the Green Poop Album, “stunner” means “song that’s actually not bad,” by the way), but this one is just a consistently solid listen all the way through, at least until it fizzles out a bit with “Holiday” and “Only in Dreams,” the ridiculous 8-minute length of which shows why Weezer have never recorded another song over five minutes. The rest is damn good, though. And (Hey! Surprise! Really!) the singles are the best songs here, although not by as wide a margin as other releases (not that I have any fucking clue what the singles off Pinkerton were). “Buddy Holly” is more than just a brilliant Happy Days tribute video, as is “Say it Ain’t So” (which is good, because it didn’t actually have such a video). Both choruses are fantabulous! Plus, who doesn’t love that little guitar trill thing near the end of the former, and who doesn’t love the “wrestle with JIMMY!!!!!!” line in the latter? Huh? I don’t know, actually. Do you? I like ‘em though, and I also like the third single, “Undone (the Sweater Song),” even if the purposely off-key guitar line in the verses makes my eardrums explode and fly across the room and hit my roommate Li in the head and make him stab me in the heart and leave me unattended until I did from blood loss. Otherwise, good stuff!
Plenty more to be found, as well. Good stuff, that is. And, even though I said the guitar parts are uninteresting here (and they are, just really heavy yet friendly chord pounding with but a few flashes of the ability to play individual notes), they’re not bad. Not moronic or anything (Hi, Green Poop Album! How are you?), just simple. I like how “My Name is Jonas” and “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” have some acoustic plucking tastiness to go with their chord pounding, I enjoy the nice solo in “In the Garage,” and I appreciate the catchiness of the guitar line at the beginning of “Say it Ain’t So.” They’re cool. They’re just not what you buy the album for. You buy the album for funny, charming, goofball lyrics, consistently strong songwriting, and, um…the cool blue cover, maybe?
This is the only Weezer album that, for me, is a slam-dunk 8+ (Pinkerton I debated for a while), and, as I said, it’s definitely the best album from these dudes. It’s dumb, yeah, but it’s smart too, and this smartness seems to be something that’s gone missing from Weezer’s most recent work (Rivers, you went to Harvard! You’re making me look bad!). It’s not the best album I’ve ever heard or some poo, but it’s darn good, and quite recommendable as well. But you all probably have a copy of it anyway, right? Yeah.
Pinkerton (1996)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “El Scorcho”
Viciously
and unfairly underrated upon its release, and really fucking overrated by a lot
of Weezer fans today, Pinkerton is just another good album, not as good
as the debut, but still a good, solid 8.
And, please, don’t believe some of the descriptions of the album you
might read. The All Music Guide, and our
good buddy Stephen Thomas Erlewine (who really
fucking loves Weezer, for some
reason), calls the opening of “Tired of Sex” a “pounding, primal assault.” Bullshit.
It’s pounding and primal for
Weezer. Big difference. He also says “the guitars rage and squeal”
and “the beats are brutal and visceral.”
These statements are true, again, if you add the all-important “for
Weezer” tag to the end of them, or if you only listen to the first two songs on
the album (“Tired of Sex” and “Getchoo”, admittedly, are pretty loud and
“visceral”). The people that call this
thing a “masterpiece” or (a recurring theme on Amazon.com, and just about the
most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard) “the greatest album of all time,” I
figure, come from two distinct groups.
First, Weezer fans, whose knowledge of music probably doesn’t go too
far, and thus think Pinkerton actually IS “brutal.” Second, people who only like it because all the
songs are about Japanese chicks (Patrick Brendan Maginnis, I’m looking at
YOU! Not that I should talk about liking
Asian women…).
Anyway, now that my initial
criticism is out of the way, I can get to how cool a lot of this record
is. First off, despite not really being
as “out there,” for the most part, as a lot of people may claim, the guitars
ARE the loudest, crunchiest, feedback-iest, coolest, most interesting guitars
you’re likely to find on a Weezer album, and they almost make some of the
lesser songs worthwhile by themselves!
Like how “Getchoo,” whose “Getchoo, UH-HUH!” chorus is just annoying, really picks up steam during the “I can’t believe…” part, and how
“Why Bother” (which sucks ass and sounds like a bad Green Day outtake) sucks a
slightly smaller amount of ass at the end than at the beginning, when the
guitars are let loose to “rage” and “squeal” a bit more.
With one exception, which I’ll get
to in a bit, the rest of the album is a pretty finger-lickin’ good time (sho’ nuff!). “El Scorcho,” first off, is probably my
favorite Weezer song, with its BRILLIANT guitar line, phenomenal lyrics (“And
I’m Jell-O, baaaaaby!”), and by far the best chorus melody on the record. “Tired of Sex” is a great opener (my 2nd
favorite tune here, probably), with a great, interesting guitar riff (No
sluggish chord pounding! Cool!), and I
love that weird keyboard-sounding thingy!
What is it? I don’t know! But it’s cool. The riff in “The Good Life” is catchy as
hell, too, which is a good thing, because the chorus doesn’t really have the
big “payoff” I’d come to expect from the debut, which is actually a recurring
theme throughout this record.
Why?
Well, the production. It helps
the guitars, and they definitely sound more alive than on any other
Weezer record, but it hurts some of the hooks.
See, the harmonies are all fucked up, and whenever they crop up, the two
voices NEVER match each other, and it sounds like the band was drunk or
something when they recorded like half the vocals. It lends a lot of the verses a cool, sloppy feel to go with the cool, sloppy guitars, but the
choruses get muddled up and lose their hookiness. I like “Pink Triangle” and “Falling for You”
and “Across the Sea” and what have you a good bit, but I might like them MORE
with a bit more careful production, and the best parts of a bunch of the songs
here are a cool guitar solo or break or something instead of an insanely catchy
sing-a-long chorus. Not that I’m
complaining all that much, you see, because this is the only
Weezer album that actually HAS cool guitar solos and breaks and stuff. I just think the hooks could be hookier,
especially on the songs that DON’T have a cool break or something in there,
like the aforementioned “Why Bother,” which is still a retarted Green Day
outtake.
Ofcourse, at least that song has a hook (and a guitar part straight out of a sub-par ass-bad Green Day outtake!), unlike the excruciatingly awful closer “Butterfly,” the sole acoustic ballad Rivers has done, and hopefully the sole reason he hasn’t done another. God, it’s so bad. So fucking bad. An unmitigated pile of awful, raunchy badness. There’s like no goddamn melody at all, the guitar “part” sounds like he was just fucking around one day and left the tape on, and the lyrics are AWFUL. It’s about a guy who cheated on his girlfriend! “I’m sorry for what I did. I did what my body told me to. I didn’t mean to do you harm.” Yeah, good excuse, Rivers. Sure. “Oh, sorry honey, I was just horny, it won’t happen again…unless I happen to get horny again.” Ugh. Total and complete bullshit, this one is. If anyone finds some sort of redeeming value in this song, they need to go fuck themselves, because if I have to fuck them myself my girlfriend might get mad. Why? Because then I’d be cheating on her.
Whatever, just put that song aside and turn the album off after track 9 (like I’ve gotten in the habit of doing), and you’ll have yourself a damn good record. Unlike other Weezer albums, cool, sloppy guitars and interesting songs and breaks await you here, and if you get past the relative lack of happy, sing-a-long hooks, you should be in for a darn good time. But please, there is nothing “primal” or “visceral” about most of this record. It just rocks a bit more than much of this band’s stuff, and it’s not super-happy power pop like you might expect from Rivers and the other dudes. I wish it had been a hit, too. Like, a BIG hit. Weezer might still be good! Instead of just sorta OK.
naterules1992@aol.com writes:
Dear Brad,
I know I seemed like an ashole (if you will remember) when
I talked about your Weezer reviews. I listened to Pinkerton and Maladroit while
paying better atention, and Pinkerton is better. Now that's cleared up, there's
some other stuff.
The other day, I picked up a copy of "Rolling
Stone", and I was flipping through the review section when I saw something
awsome. In the "Rolling Stone Hall of Fame" section, there was a
review of Pinkerton. Five stars. Seriously. They talked about all of the personal
stuff in it like Rivers falling in love with a lesbian (Pink Triangle), getting
his invitaion to a girl to Greenday concert rebuked (El Schorcho), and, yes
this actually happened, becoming obsessed with a girl from Japan who wrote him
a fan letter who he'd never seen or met (Across the Sea). If you want to read
it, it's in the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" issue.
Just in case you were wondering, 'Like a Rolling Stone" won. Cool stuff.
Also, Pinkerton is a concept album! It's based on Rivers's
favorite opera, "Madam Butterfly". It sound kinda gay, but the
similarities are cool. I won't go into those because there are a bunch, and I'm
sure you're gerring tired of reading some idiot's email.
Nate
Weezer (Green Album) (2001)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Hash Pipe”
Poop on this one. Now, the circumstances that led to the recording of this album make its stupid-ness at least understandable, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. See, as I’ve alluded to a few times, Pinkerton was, originally, a first-class flop, as well as well ridiculously panned by the critics (Rolling Stone called it the worst album of 1996! I’m sure SOMEONE released a worse album that year, especially considering Pinkerton’s actually GOOD), and so little insecure Rivers retreated into his little insecure Rivers hole, refusing to come out until it looked to him like people actually WANTED another Weezer album. Pinkerton had to grow on people (due to its not being stupid happy pop like Weezer fans want (sorry any Weezer fans I know (Lauren (who probably doesn’t read this page, ever)))), and it eventually did, so Rivers finally decided to make another album after five fucking years out of the spotlight. And, in doing so, he made a conscious return to the “simple happy pop” of the debut, only he forgot a few things: intelligence, wit, creativity, and, most important of all, an album’s worth of good songs. Ugh.
It sounds like it took him roughly one goddamn week to make the whole thing. I mean, he couldn’t be bothered actually come up with a real title (You already have a self-titled album! You can’t have TWO!!!!), the whole thing is TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES long (anything under half an hour does not actually equal an album in my book), and most of it sounds like it could have been written on the can. The two singles are money, sure, but the other eight songs are basically the same fucking goddamn thing over and over and over again, with the only difference being that some are OK and some blow out loud (yet still remain, essentially, the same thing as the ones that are OK). The first two tracks here (Hey! Surprise! Really!), “Don’t Let Go” and “Photograph,” are probably the best non-singles, basically because they actually seem like fully-developed songs instead of five-second toss-offs. There’s a cool guitar something-or-other happening on top of the sluggish chord pounding (It’s BACK! With a VENGEANCE!) in the former, and the latter has a great hook, so, despite a complete and total lack of originality, energy, or anything really interesting, the songs aren’t that bad.
As I said, the two singles are the
only deviations from this record’s mind-numbingly boring formula, and therefore
EASILY the two best songs here. “Hash
Pipe” contains the only actual riff on the album, combined with some lovely
falsetto vocal tastiness, and “Island in the Sun” is the only moment where the
Weezebags let up on the heavy guitars for a bit, with nice results (I
especially love that “Hey! Hey!” vocal
hook thing). The rest is a complete
fucking waste of time, though. Ric
Ocasek (a.k.a. “The ugly dude from the Cars”) is back producing, as he did on
the band’s first self-titled record (FUCKERS!
YOU CAN’T FUCKING HAVE TWO OF THEM!!!), and manages here to sap
out all the energy and creativity that Rivers might have had. Every song left is just a mid-tempo fruity
power pop tune, consisting of sluggish power chord strumming, no discernable
verse-chorus structure (Are these even SONGS???? It sounds like they just jump in half-way
through!), and absolutely no personality AT ALL. Some of them have guitar solos, but each
guitar solo follows the vocal melody note-for-note, which I don’t have a
problem with on Nevermind, but fucking pisses me off here, because Kurdtdt Kckowbayne could
write circles around Rivers Fucking Cuomo any day of the week. I mean, sure, “Crab” and “Knock-Down,
Drag-Out” are OK (catchy!), but there’s nothing else worthwhile in these songs,
and then tracks 7-10 are just a total wasteland of uselessness, and I never
ever want to hear these songs again (whatever they are…by this point everything
blends together into a lazy, shoddily-written mush). And it took Rivers FIVE YEARS to come up with
this shit? Right. Ass.
This album is just idiotic. I
mean, sure, chunks of it are pretty catchy (Rivers still knows how to write a
melody when he wants to), but it’s just so stupid, moronic and samey. It’s like Rivers just gave up on making
anything remotely “challenging” on this one and just aimed
for the frickin’ teeny-bopper moron crowd.
The whole purpose of the album is contained in the lyrics to “Simple
Pages,” part of the utterly faceless track 7-10 mush I choose to not talk
about: “Kick it on back, kick it on back, kick it on back to what you
know. Gimme some love, gimme some love,
sugar, on the hard rock radio.” If Pinkerton was Rivers’ bid for “artistic respectability,” this record is his
total surrender of any of that respectability in the name of
record sales. Thankfully, he still
throws in a decent number of good hooks, so it’s not a TOTAL waste of time, but
it still, for the most part, blows fat, delicious dong. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
ddickson@rice.edu writes:
Now now now now, Brad, what
did I tell you about NOT going crazy? We's got
to have a little TALK, here, Crazy McCrazealot.
So. I think this is the most consistent album of Weezer's career thus
far.
Yeah, yeah, it ain't "creative" or "avant-garde" or
anything, but it has no
non-hooky songs on it, and not a bum moment. Sure, it's not the most
mind-
blowing of 28-minute LPs, but they're not really a mind-blowing band
(ever). They're just Cheap Trick for the '90's, no more, no less.
And I'm
in no position to compare Rivers Cuomo and Kurt Cobain, but I'd say if you
take away all the "raw adolescent emotion" "voice of his
generation"
and "blown his brains out with a shotgun" crappity crap crap, and
just
compare on a pure "verse-melody-hook-chorus-riff
say they're about equal, and both Corgan and Yorke blow them outta the
water.
Yeah, yeah, I made my reservation for the EIGHTH circle of hell, but the
FUCKERS overbooked it!! Darn.
Heheheh sorry. So anyway, every song on here is lightweight, sappy,
simple,
stupid, '60's-ish, retro, absolutely non-alternative, and for girls girls
GIRLS and no one else, but still--within that context, every song rules.
Not an un-catchy second on here. Problem is, it isn't really an
"album" per
se--it's just a collection of really good happy cute power pop songs with
nothing to do with each other. I think they should have nixed the
Maladroit
and dumped all the good songs from there onto here. Then it woulda REALLY
torn.
Maladroit (2002)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Dope Nose”
If not a return to mid-nineties form, this one
at least presents a return to respectability.
Weezer’s never gonna make an album like their first two again (just
accept that), but this album’s not that bad, and it’s definitely a HUGE
improvement on the Green Poop Album.
There’s actually some energy! The
band’s not processed and produced to within an inch of its life! There are RIFFS! Actual RIFFS!
Not all of them are ace, but at least they’re there. There’s a nice mix of tunes
here (easily the most (i.e. only) diverse album Weezer’s made). Headbangin’ riff rockers, punky tunes,
pseudo-ballads, and a jumpy quasi-jazzy strummer thing all live together in
perfect harmony here. And there’s guitar
solos, too! That DON’T follow the vocal
melody! Like real metalhead guitar
solos! Cool stuff.
It’s still just a 7, though, because
Rivers’ songwriting is still not where it was last decade. But putting that aside for a moment, as I
said, the album’s not idiotic and stupid (thankfully), and four tunes here are
PHENOMENAL, including the first three tracks on the album (Hey! Surprise!
Really!). “American Gigolo” leads
things off with a cool riff, great hook, and a real catchy rockin’ good
time! The
barely-over-two-minutes-but-nevertheless-awesome “Dope Nose” follows, and it
might just be the most unfairly catchy tune the band’s ever put to
tape. I once heard about a 10-second
snippet of the thing, and I couldn’t get that snippet out of my head
for about a week. Imagine what happened
when I heard the whole song! “For…the
times…that you wanna go and…bust rhymes real slow!” Stupid lyrics, yeah, but catchy! And Rivers stopped being an interesting
lyricist the moment Pinkerton tanked anyway, so don’t expect much from
him in that department. I also love the
little half-solo flair things that whichever of the guitarists actually plays
the damn solos tosses out around the chorus.
Hummable! One of the band’s best
songs, it is. “Keep Fishin’,” the BOIG
single (Great video too. Who doesn’t
love the Muppets?), is an excellent tune as well, with its tempo shifts and
such, and that “quasi-jazzy strummer thing” I was talking about earlier,
“Burndt Jamb,” is possibly the most interesting song Weezer have yet done, and, like
“Island in the Sun” from the last album, functions well as the only tune where
the band actually bothers to turn the damn heavy guitars down for a bit, the
fucking commercial whore assplugs.
Nothing else is really that great,
hence the 7, but there are still fine moments to be had. “Take Control” can rock the house down on a
good day, parts of “Slob” are INSANELY catchy (NOT the “get yourself a wife”
parts, though. Fuck those),
pseudo-ballad #2, “Slave” (pseudo-ballad #1, “Death and Destruction,” isn’t
that good) is a good, hooky time, once you get past the parts that sounds
FUCKING EXACTLY like Creed (seriously…it’s scary), and,
um…well, “Fall Together” has a cool drum intro and nice-enough riff, I guess,
but the last handful of songs here just aren’t that memorable to me, although
they aren’t really bad either, much like the rest of the album. “Space Rock,” despite the kinda neat falsetto
vocals, is so underdeveloped and random it becomes incomprehensible (OK, THIS
one, I’m sure, is not an actual song), and “Possibilities” follows in the “crap
Green Day outtake” footsteps of “Why Bother” from Pinkerton, but neither of
these songs offend me like the worst of Weezer (i.e. fucking “BUTTERFLY,” FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT AWFUL RAUNCHY
RIDICULOUS BADNESS!!!), and many
of these songs, beyond the best handful, are just nice, but don’t leave the
most indelible impression.
What this record does is,
essentially, complete Weezer’s transformation from “charming, fun, witty,
intelligent, nerdy power-pop band” to “arena rockers.” Listen to these songs! Can’t you picture them playing “Take Control”
or “Dope Nose” or something to a giant stadium of like 50,000 people with
flashing light shows and Patrick Wilson banging his sticks together while the
crowd counts 1-2-3-4 all together?
Rivers is still a pretty good (if inconsistent) songwriter, but any
interesting, unique personality this band might have had in the mid-nineties is
just totally gone at this point. Is it
any wonder their logo (that flying W thing) is just a carbon copy of Van
Halen’s? “Dope Nose” is about as close
to the spirit of DLR-era Van Halen (minus personality, DLR’s incredible
charisma and Eddie’s jawdroppingly brilliant guitar playing) as anything new
I’ve heard in a while. The difference is
that Van Halen would fill up an entire
album with stuff as good as “Dope
Nose” (and WITH personality, DLR’s incredible charisma and Eddie’s
jawdroppingly brilliant guitar playing), whereas Weezer can only pull off a few
of these per record (and WITHOUT personality, DLR’s incredible char-blah blah
blah…). A lot of the rest of the tunes
here are just mildly catchy, decent yet unmemorable arena power-pop-metal
posturing (or something, why do we need classifications?), something I can
enjoy in small doses, but not something I’d dig into regularly.
In conclusion, the Red Sox will win
the World Series this year (You heard it here first!), and then I will die a
violent yet happy death in the ensuing mob.
Make Believe (2005)
Rating: 3
Best Song: “You’re My Best Friend”
Sometime between the release of Maladroit and this record, Rivers Cuomo completely lost it. Maybe it was after he made the downright weird decision to go back to Harvard and finish the degree he abandoned a decade before to make Weezer’s first self-titled album, or maybe he just got raging drunk one night and accidentally left his songwriting ability in a cab after berating the driver and arrogantly referring to him as “George” despite the fact that his unpronounceable name was clearly printed on an ID card easily seen from the back seat. I do not know, and I do not profess to know. But, whatever he lost and whenever he lost it, the fact remains that this album sucks. Sucks ass. While neither The Green Poop Album nor Maladroit was ever gonna make anyone forget the goodness of Weezer’s first two records, at least they were decent. Hell, I like Maladroit! The Green Album is lame and stupid, yeah, but at least it’s catchy. Not this album, though. This album sucks. Sucks hard. Don’t let the payola critics on Rolling Stone or the All Music Guide tell you otherwise. Because this album SUCKS.
And, good
christ, can you tell it’s gonna suck early. It only takes about five seconds, i.e. the
drum roll and first few chords of “
Unfortunately, however, the remaining tracks don’t get much better. They just stop being morbidly offensive and settle into a depressingly generic, poorly-written, overly-simple mush that should make even die-hard Weezer fans question Rivers’ current ability to write songs. By my count, there are three halfway-passable songs on the album (and even these would individually get maybe a 5 each). The bouncy piano verses to “Perfect Situation” are catchy enough to not make me hate them, despite their being counteracted by a ridiculous Creed lazy chord-banging chorus that sucks. “This is Such a Pity” tries to be a Cars song by having a weird keyboard in it and not being slow as fuck, so in that sense it’s better than most everything else here and not that bad, but beyond these facts it has no reason to exist. “You’re My Best Friend” is lyrically the most asinine thing Rivers has ever written (“You’re my best friend! And I love you!”), but the should-be-moronic idea of having one guitar repeatedly strum one chord over and over in the chorus sorta kinda works, and there are one or two little guitar trill things that remind me very vaguely of why I loved “Dope Nose” from Maladroit so much, but, beyond those things, that’s about it for that song too. And that’s it. That’s the passable material on this album. The rest is dumb, generic city. That’s pathetic.
What the fuck happened to this band? I was never a big fan or anything, but I respected them and felt Rivers had the ability to write very catchy, melodic songs when he wanted to. If they wanted to stop being meaningful and start being stupid, I would’ve at least tolerated it if they stuck to mindlessly catchy, two-minute arena-rock singles like the best moments on Maladroit, but this album is so un-fun and un-energetic and un-catchy that it just makes me depressed and angry when I listen to it. The number of by-the-numbers, alarmingly un-interesting near-power ballads on this album is astounding, especially considering Weezer had written exactly zero such songs prior to this record. If you like overly slow, boring tunes with predictable soft-loud dynamics, verses that do nothing interesting, choruses that consist of three chords lazily strummed over and over with tons of distortion, and obvious (to the point of being insulting) lyrics like “But now I feel the shame. There’s no one else to blame,” then you’ll probably like this album. But if you have high tolerance for pompous Jesus posing you’ll probably like Creed, too, because the only thing separating this record from something by that fine (*makes wanking motion with right hand*) band is that Rivers’ voice is, obviously, nicer and more tuneful than that of Scott Stapp and that CREED, ON THE WHOLE, ACTUALLY TOOK MORE MUSICAL CHANCES THAN WEEZER DO ON THIS ALBUM.
What, you think I’m kidding? I’m dead serious! This album is simple to the point of being retarted. System of a Down pack more musical ideas into a thirty-second accordion break than Weezer do into this entire record. “We Are All on Drugs” is absolutely the worst, most moronic anti-drug song ever penned, and songs like “The Other Way” and “Hold Me,” whose choruses consist of Rivers crooning out the titles of the songs 50 times over chord sequences copyrighted sometime in 1964, should make any self-respecting music fan feel like they are losing IQ points just by listening to them. When they turn off the guitars for something like “Freak Me Out,” they sound even simpler. It’s absolutely fucking ridiculous. The Green Poop Album was stupid and dumbed-down and retarted, but the singles kicked, the melodies were occasionally catchy, the songs were pop, and the whole thing was done in the time it takes to microwave a burrito. This record is just as mentally-challenged, if not more so, with the added bonuses of a really slow tempo, a preponderance of power ballads that Aerosmith would probably toss out, and one of the worst songs of the decade as its lead single and opening track. Is Rivers that retarted, or does he just think the general public is that stupid? They aren’t, are they?
Wait…don’t answer that.
Weezer (Red Album) (2008)
Rating: 3
Best Song:
“Troublemaker”
OK, so can we all agree that Weezer sucks now? Is that cool? Their first two albums were really good and all, but do you realize that Pinkerton came out twelve years ago, and the best thing they’ve released since is Maladroit? And that their last two albums have now been flaming piles of excrement? How long can people keep giving this band the benefit of the doubt because they liked “Buddy Holly” so much? Seriously. This is the second consecutive Weezer album that I would describe as “horrendous” and “moronic.” This is not the band that made Pinkerton anymore. This is a rock band with little songwriting skill, nothing interesting to offer musically, and no sincerity whatsoever. This is a fucking terrible band.
I’ll admit that, musically, The Red Album (By the way, six albums and THREE OF THEM ARE NAMED WEEZER!!!??? Are you fucking serious?) is a bit better and more interesting than its predecessor, but then again so are all three albums Creed has released, so it’s not like I’m gonna give Rivers a cookie for making something marginally more interesting than Make Believe. He takes a few chances here, which is notable because the only chance he took on Make Believe was not titling it Weezer. The obvious “chance” is the six minute medley tune “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn),” and like other reviewers I will give Rivers “props” for trying something so far out of Weezer’s comfort zone. The song changes styles roughly every 35 seconds and runs the gamut from metal to rap to piano pop to overdubbed choral round singing to hard rock to horrendous spoken word sections to everything. However, there is a problem, and this is that, despite all this admirable “chance-taking” and “variety,” the song is really, really, really bad. The first issue leading to this, obviously, is starting out with the rap section, which may be the worst 45 seconds on the entire record (no mean feat, mind you). The second issue is that the song makes absolutely no sense. I don’t know why I should give Rivers credit for making a song with a lot of different sections that all have different styles when not a single one of the sections ties together with anything else and the song ends up collapsing into a giant mess of hastily thrown-together bullshit. The spoken word section about halfway through is when the badness becomes abundantly clear. “If you don't like it, you can shove it. But you don't like it, you love it.” Shut up, Rivers. Just shut up. I’m 100% sure that Rivers is attempting to be somehow ironic with all the ridiculous posing in this song (another sample lyric: “After the havoc that I'm gonna wreak, no more words will critics have to speak!”), but that doesn’t change the fact that he sounds like a moron. The moment you made a record that Pitchfork gave a rating of less than 1 to (that was fully justified) was the moment you lost the ability to call out your critics ironically (or not, which would actually be worse). Just shut up.
This brings me to the worst thing about the album. As I said, musically it’s not nearly as horrendous as Make Believe. It’s probably a solid 4, and it even has a few genuinely (sorta) catchy songs on it. The problem is that the lyrics are absolutely fucking asinine, and (annoyingly) you find the worst lyrics in the few songs that are actually OK. The lead track “Troublemaker” and the single “Pork & Beans,” while really just formulaic Weezer power pop trifles, are the first songs since Maladroit that are actually catchy and half-decently written in the Weezer catalog. They’re short, snappy power pop songs with heavy, warmed over guitars that sound exactly like you figure Weezer should sound like. Hell, if Rivers never opened his mouth (or limited his singing to a sequence of “la la la”’s), I’d probably genuinely like “Troublemaker,” which is very snappy and has a genuinely nice riff and OK melody, but unfortunately the opening couplet of the song (and thus the album) goes “Put me in a special school ‘cause I am such a fool!” Honestly, my heart sank the second I heard that, which means I knew this album was gonna suck as much as Make Believe after FIVE SECONDS. The lyrics are of the same “I’m awesome! I’m a rock star! I kick ass!” variety as the crap medley song, but now they’re combined with some lovely “Screw you! I do what I want!” clichés (and you know I always love those). The chorus goes “I'm a troublemaker, never been a faker! Doin' things my own way and never giving up!” Poetry it is, eh? Given such couplets as “I picked up a guitar. What does this signify? I'm gonna play some heavy metal riffs and you will die,” I’m again 100% sure that Rivers is trying to be somehow ironic here, but let me say that, no matter how clever he was in the mid-nineties, he is terrible at this winking irony stuff now. It just sounds so fake, like he read all the stuff that bitched about Make Believe being soulless pandering and how Weezer had lost that honest, ironically funny side that made the first two albums so interesting, so he just tried to be as ironically funny as possible on The Red Album. Witness the hideous “Everybody Get Dangerous,” which actually has “BOO-YEAH!” as a line because apparently Rivers thought it was clever to make fun of people who say “BOO-YEAH,” as well as the dreadful “Heart Songs,” in which Rivers goes through all the bands he used to listen to when he was younger in an all-too-obvious stab at a sequel to “In the Garage.” Problem is “In the Garage” wasn’t a limp acoustic power ballad with strings and overwrought vocal overdubs and was actually clever instead of having lines like “Eddy Rabbit sang about how much he loved a rainy night, Abba Devo Benatar were there the day John Lennon died, Mr. Springsteen said he had a hungry heart, Grover Washington was happy on the day he topped the chart.” This is the kind of stuff a ten year old would write. Not a major, internationally famous rock band.
I want to return to “Pork & Beans” for a bit, since I mentioned that it was one of the two decent songs here before I launched into an assault on the album’s lyrical content. Honestly, it’s not even that good. It’s a marginally goofball acoustic riff that sounds like a neutered version of the “El Scorcho” intro that leads into a pounding power pop chorus that sounds like it came off a Weezer assembly line. The fact that it’s kinda catchy makes it the second-best song here, of course, but whatever. The point is that, again, the song is simply idiotic, and shows just how much of a pandering tool Rivers really is. It’s based entirely around the “I’m gonna be who I wanna be! Screw you! I don’t care what you all think!” idea (whoever “you” may be). The chorus “Imma do the things that I wanna do, I ain't got a thing to prove to you” is eerily similar to the chorus to “Troublemaker,” of course, and it’s clear Rivers was really going for the controversial language that may get his record banned from Wal-Marts everywhere with the final cutting line “I don't give a hoot about what you think!” Yeah! You tell him! You don’t give a HOOT! And the “shot” at Timbaland? Why is it a “shot” again? Considering how fucking bad your last two albums have been, perhaps you should work with him, because you’re obviously a long way from “perfecting your art,” Rivers.
Anyway, the point to all this bashing is that Rivers clearly cares way too much about what others think about his music. This has been painfully clear since he went into a petulant corner for half a decade after Pinkerton wasn’t well-received, and it’s come to a head on this thing. You know who cares the most about what people say about them? People who say again and again and again how much they don’t care. If they really didn’t care, they wouldn’t even talk about it. So Rivers’ preoccupation with what mythical “others” think about him causes him to ruin the two good songs he wrote for the album with awful lyrics about how much he doesn’t care what people think and his conscious attempt to go back to all the clever, winking humor that made The Blue Album so good (because he does care what people think, and cares terribly) causes him to fuck up the rest (or at least make it even worse than it would have been otherwise). I think this album panders even worse than Make Believe did. All the pseudo-humor is such a pale imitation of The Blue Album that it’s clear Rivers isn’t at all sincere about it anymore. He’s smarmy. He’s doing it because he thinks that’s what people want from a Weezer album, and the sad thing is that he’s not even right. People like The Blue Album because all the winking, clever, ironic humor was true and sincere and captured the real thoughts of an insecure, self-deprecating kid. Now that kid is a fucking tool, but he’s just as insecure, and as a result we get this shitheap passed off as a Weezer album.
The funny thing is that some of the “pandering to the unwashed masses” found on Make Believe shows up anyway. Witness the ridiculous, overdramatic overdubs in both “Dreamin’” and “Heart Songs” (the latter of which I’ve already talked about), and what the hell is the closing “The Angel and the One” supposed to be? How does a ballad so hilariously overdone it makes Make Believe sound like a punk album end up on here? I don’t ask for much from Rivers Cuomo, but I certainly don’t want a six minute power ballad that ends with his yelling out “PEACE!! PEACE!!!” Ugh. The oddest thing is that the three sidemen songs everyone seems so worked up about piss me off much less than nearly all of the Rivers material, even if the songs themselves are pretty weak (which of course is to be expected, considering people not named Rivers Cuomo had written exactly zero songs on the five previous Weezer releases). The Brian Bell song “Thought I Knew” may as well be titled “Thought I Knew How to Use Acoustic Guitar Loops and Drum Machines, but I Guess I Didn’t,” but I don’t hate it, so I guess that’s a victory. The one about stalking the little girl that Rivers gives Scott Shriner to sing is creepy and dirty and strange and bad, but (again) it’s a welcome respite from Rivers’ dragging his reputation through the mud, so I’m gonna go ahead and ignore the “I’ll be here to sex you!” line and just move on to the Patrick Wilson-penned “Automatic,” which sounds like a modern metal computer program wrote it. Fine. Whatever.
I really hate this album. Based purely on my level of hate for it, I should probably give it a 2, but that would be rating it lower than Make Believe, and considering it’s clearly better musically (even if it’s much more offensively rotten in other areas), that wouldn’t make any sense, so a 3 it is. I mean, there are two songs here that (lyrics aside) are actually decent, plus a third in which Rivers takes more musical chances than he had on Weezer’s three previous albums combined, so I have to give it a 3, don’t I? It’s not my fault that the musical “chances” don’t work and that the lyrics to the two decent songs are a joke. Plus the Brian Bell song isn’t that awful, and the other sidemen songs don’t piss me off, so why not. I like how I’m justifying giving a Weezer album a 3 instead of a 2 by referencing the song Brian Bell wrote, by the way. That’s great. God, Weezer sucks now.
megatug@gmail.com writes:
Some of your criticisms on
the red album, specifically pork & beans, are fucking retarded. He isn't
taking a shot at Timbaland, and "perhaps you should work with him,
because you're obviously a long way from "perfecting your art,"
Rivers. " You're kidding right? Weezer have never had a problem
"topping the charts" so to speak. The song was written to purposely
be a huge hit as it Rivers wrote it after Geffen told him to write more
commercial material or something, hence the lack of cursing and "i don't
care" attitude(something that you've praised in other album reviews but
slam here).
Yeah dude, you don't like Weezer, we get it. Wouldn't even be such a big deal
if you didn't just write off Foo Fighters/Audioslave albums as "okay"
and hand them good grades despite being some of the most generic bullshit ever
written. All I hear when I listen to this album is some irresistable hooks and
melodies from a guy who has clearly lost his fucking mind and is having a blast
in his new state of pop insanity.