Weezer - Red Album

[hildegoat]

It looks like the A.V. Club didn't like it. :lol

Congrats Make Believe, you’re no longer Weezer’s worst album.



The breathtakingly stupid Weezer begs the question: Is this for real? Or are the over-processed hooks and lobotomized lyrics intentional self-parody? When Rivers Cuomo sings, "So turn off the TV, 'cause that's what others see, and movies are as bad as eating chocolate ice cream," is he a comic genius feigning creative bankruptcy? (C'mon, look at the crrrazy album cover!) Either way, it doesn't matter. If the so-called "Red Album" really is an elaborate goof on an all-too-forgiving fan base, that doesn't make Weezer's newest worst album any less insipid.

Peaking early on Weezer's untouchable first two records, Cuomo now seems unable (or unwilling) to write a single heartfelt song. Instead, he substitutes smarm for sentiment on embarrassing dreck like "Heart Songs," paying tribute to everyone from Nirvana to Debbie Gibson (while mistakenly referencing a Tiffany song) with an air of insufferable, ain't-I-a-stinker smirkiness better suited for the likes of Bowling For Soup. Even after the apparent bottoming-out of 2005's Make Believe, Weezer is a dispiritingly awful record. The contrast between pap like "Pork And Beans" and "Everybody Get Dangerous" and the hilariously twisted, emotionally pent-up songs the band was once known for has never been starker. The blame for Weezer can't all be laid on Cuomo—his bandmates' songwriting contributions (particularly Brian Bell's Uncle Kracker stab "Thought I Knew") are just as unforgivably soulless. Together they punch holes in Weezer where the heart and brain should be.

A.V. Club Rating: D

[sipowicz]

I still haven't listened to it...I really am afraid. Make Believe was bad, and this doesn't seem to be the one to follow it up...

[Starlite]

I still haven't listened to it...I really am afraid. Make Believe was bad, and this doesn't seem to be the one to follow it up...
:nod I'm scared too.

[hildegoat]

I didn't even listen to Make Believe because the songs I heard on the radio were absolute crap. I'm pretty sure I won't be listening to this either.

[Starlite]

I bought Make Believe the day it was released, only to be terribly disappointed. *sigh*

[burgerqueen]

I didn't even listen to Make Believe because the songs I heard on the radio were absolute crap. I'm pretty sure I won't be listening to this either.

That's how I feel too.

When I heard Beverly Hills, I decided I wasn't rushing out to buy it until I heard something else. Then I never heard anything else I liked so I didn't buy it. Now it seems I should avoid this one as well. It's sad I used to love them so much.

[ewok.online]

I tried to listen to it again today.

No dice. Turned it off and put on Pinkerton instead.

[hildegoat]

I'm waiting for the Pitchfork review -- I think they gave Make Believe a 0.4. Those type of reviews are much more entertaining than the good ones.

[Rob]

They gave it a 4.7



Although weaned on prog-metal, educated in classical music at Harvard, and once viewed as a representative of the indie rock set, Weezer's Rivers Cuomo prefers to write simple music that can be easily enjoyed by a mass audience. It was one of many elements that defined him in the beginning, on his band's hugely popular 1994 self-titled debut (The Blue Album), if one of few remaining characteristics defining his music today.

Following poor initial sales of the record's follow-up, the more introspective cult hit Pinkerton, Cuomo famously retreated from the public eye. Over the next five years, the band would remain silent, cultivating goodwill and an ever-growing army of fans. But most of that goodwill has deteriorated since their re-emergence in 2001, in the wake of three mediocre-to-awful albums that were, in many ways, the opposite of what made Cuomo's band so adored in the first place.

Sadly, the once burned-out Weezer continue to fade away: Those first two records capture their decade in 75 minutes of near-perfect power-pop: straight-faced irony, eccentric sincerity, meta references, and bipolar guitar distortion from ordinary-looking outcasts who became stars and then complained about it. Punk that's too catchy to offend. Pop that's too smart to cop to itself. And, uh, emo. After Pinkerton, the deluge; rap-metal and post-grunge wound up so thoroughly conquering modern rock that now even staunch rockists are making excited noises about "American Idol" winner David Cook. Hey, somebody's supposed to save mainstream rock'n'roll, right?

Not these guys. Beginning with 2001's so-so Green Album and plumbing Jules Verne depths with 2005's terrible Make Believe, the band began to take on some of the most infuriating characteristics of the very bands that had replaced them during their absence: intelligence-insulting songwriting, cookie-cutter dynamics, questionable facial hair. At the very least, The Red Album (as Weezer have nicknamed their latest) is a first step toward rehabilitation-- a tacit admission that recent discs, with their empty universality and recycled riffs, had a problem. But it's not a return to glory unless you consider 2001 their glory days.

Judging by appetizing first single "Pork and Beans", The Red Album could've been almost as funny and catchy as Pinkerton's "El Scorcho", only from the perspective of a married man coming up on 40. It's as if last year's demos compilation, Alone, helped Cuomo remember how to do this stuff right. His sarcastic mention of super-producer Timbaland's chart magic is as hilarious as it is on-point-- especially after Madonna's dreadful, Tim-helmed #1 single, "4 Minutes". Jacknife Lee (who co-produced the album along with Make Believe overseer Rick Rubin) lets the chorus explode from the mix in a way that little on the radio does anymore. It demands to be sung by millions of uncomprehending bar-goers.

With an opening Rogaine reference, "Pork and Beans" also establishes The Red Album's main theme. Already a self-described "old man" on Pinkerton, Cuomo is focused these days on reliving his lost youth-- probably the same reason some of us still listen to Weezer albums. Lead track and third single "Troublemaker" starts back in school, a faint whiff of existential angst and a surging bridge helping to redeem a vapid chorus and monotonous, familiar-sounding guitars. The laughably bad "Heart Songs" is The Blue Album's nostalgic "In the Garage" schmaltzed up as a sort of name-dropping "Circle of Life"; if Nirvana had "the chords that broke the chains I had upon me," kudos to Cuomo for swiping them on the otherwise forgettable teenage prankfest "Everybody Get Dangerous" (to quote: "boo-yahhh").

At this point, Weezer is as much a brand as a band. When Cuomo relinquishes the mic, The Red Album could be by any group of modern-rock mediocrities. Longtime guitarist Brian Bell gets throaty and twangy like a poor man's Rob Thomas on repetitive non-apology "Thought I Knew", backed by bland acoustic guitar and a TR-808 drum machine. Bassist Scott Shriner speak-sings in creepy stalker mode on "Cold Dark World", with Cuomo swooping to the rescue on the choruses. "Automatic", led by original drummer Pat Wilson, returns to the faceless crunching of 2002's Maladroit.

Not that Cuomo needs other voices to reveal that The Red Album is hardly the work of idiosyncratic auteurship the first couple of singles could've suggested. He sings on peppy, tempo-switching "Dreamin'" and the grandiose finale, "The Angel and the One", but for all their background-friendly polish, both are typical, vacuous latter-day Weezer tracks.

The Red Album's most ambitious song adapts the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts". The melody, played first on piano recalling Pinkerton's "Across the Sea", is more obvious than the Erik Satie snippet Cuomo ganked for The Blue Album's "Surf Wax America", but now, as then, the theft isn't the point. "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)" is the warped genius let loose, from half-rapped intro to Queen bombast to baroque a cappella. Like the YouTube culture the "Pork and Beans" video depicts so well, the song-- and this album-- relies on a high quantity of short-lived pretty good ideas to distract from a shortage of great ones.

-Marc Hogan, June 02, 2008

[ewok.online]

That's pretty generous for pitchfork.

[Rob]

That's pretty generous for pitchfork.
They must be thinking that it's not cool to bash Weezer anymore.

[ewok.online]

:lol

Probably.

[sipowicz]

They must be thinking that it's not cool to bash Weezer anymore.

Pitchfork is so cool...god I wish I was them. :D

[gweeps]

Too many people are stymied by nostalgia when it comes to music. Though listenable, it's probably not as good as your memories of when you first got into it. Ditto for most music out there. So, sit back and enjoy. It's not that bad, trust me.

[gweeps]

The tracks Rivers sings on are pretty good. People ought to quit being so nostalgic; Rivers obviously isn't.