It takes a lot for me to disown a band. I’ve cast off longtime friends with less hemming/hawing than when finally pulling a plug on a group that I’ve followed for years. Not to say that I don’t get tired of certain bands or grow out of a particular band. That’s not what I’m on about here. I’m talking about being thoroughly disappointed by a band that you love in such a way that you hold out no hope of their rehabilitation — no mere tiring of a band you only kinda liked (e.g., getting over Ted Leo after Living With the Living failed to thrill). I’m talking about when a band disappoints you so bad that you have to hastily listen to their complete back catalogue to determine if you were ever justified in liking them in the first place.
I’ve only ever ditched a band for good once before – U2 following All That You Can’t Leave Behind – but it seems that Weezer has joined the dread Irish bloat-mongers in my own personal torture chamber of pure sonic crapola.
I know what you’re all saying, “Wait a sec there, bro? Whattabout Make Believe?”
Actually, I quite dig Make Believe. It’s a misunderstood album – much like Pinkerton – a little ball of angst and existential crisis slathered in guitars and vocal harmony. It’s a little more sedate than Pinkerton, which makes sense given that the album is largely about achieving spiritual contentment and growing up and out of adolescent behaviors. It’s like a pop punk All Things Must Pass. It’s a lyrically-direct album that can seem self-helpy at times (and rightfully so).
Even the track that gets a lot of the Make Believe hate action “Beverly Hills” isn’t as dumb as it sounds. Sure it’s got that dippy, recycled Steve Miller Band vibe going on, but I absolutely love the bit about the housemaid cleaning the floor and getting “the spaces in-between.” That one detail is an almost Ray-Davies-worthy bit of precision. Social climbing is reduced to a desire to live in a very clean bathroom.
If Make Believe has a crucial fault, it’s the sing-songy “We Are All on Drugs” which manages to be simultaneously juvenile, phony, and preachy in a way that doesn’t fit the album’s reflective, plainspoken tone. In my expert analysis, Make Believe seems to be a renouncing of irony and pretense in favor of straight dealing. (Check the Shakespeare quote in the liner notes.) “Drugs” is the sole goofy, “ironic” move on the album and it sounds crap. (Sure, the schoolyard melody doesn’t help.)
Hey! Hold on a minute. The Record Desk is currently considering the Red Album, right? Why all the talk of Make Believe. This isn’t a belated review for the likes of RAWK! Magazine or somesuch, is it?
Basically, I wanted to make a case for my total devotion to all things Weezer. I had to separate myself from the rest of those foaming blog animals who still treat Weezer’s 2006 effort as a punching bag. I am not one of those, “I only dig the first two records” Weezer types. I’ve seriously found something to like about all of their pre-2008 albums. Weezer is one of the bands that has routinely reminded me that four-piece pop rock bands can still turn out touching, enjoyable records without any pretense or experimental frippery.
So when I say that I’m through with Weezer, it means something. I haven’t slowly lost the spark. The Red Album is a paradigm-shifting audio-turd that will forevermore change the way I think about all the discs stacked around the Record Desk. It sucks more than anything else has ever sucked. Just now, it ran over my puppy and made a pass at my wife. It owes me ten bucks. I hate it.
Now let me tell you how I really feel –
Over the course of the Red Album, Rivers Cuomo and company manage to use the word “underwear” in a rhyme twice, exhort everyone to “Get Dangerous” in the style of petty highschool vandals, and rip off “Simple Gifts” as part of a “Quick One While He’s Away” type multi-segment songwriting exercise. The two best songs on Red are the quickly-written, label-mandated single “Pork and Beans” and the back-from-the-demo relic “Dreamin’” – and the latter is pretty slightly b-side material carried along by virtue of its vocal arrangement. Very little of the album actually rocks in the crunchy, fizzy Weezer style. And the sensitive bits are cringeworthy and melodically slight with oozy arrangements that don’t boast the saturated guitar textures that usually keep the other albums’ slow material from devolving into total schmaltz.
The main problem with this Red Album is that Weezer doesn’t seem to know who they are with this release. Actually, my wife put it as “Who does Weezer think they are?” The attempted versatility is off-putting – the theme and variation stunt, the smug “smoove” “ironic” voice of the lyrics, the rotating singers, the tender slow jam dedicated to Rivers’ favorite FM craprock. (Seriously, “Heart Songs” is super-double god-awful. It’s embarrassing to even let people know that you’ve heard it.)
Lyrically, Rivers seems to have mistaken mere biography (“Troublemaker,” “Heart Songs”) for candor and intimacy. Musically, the riffs don’t justify the slight writing. All the advanced talk of “musically adventurous” recording sessions is puzzling. Perhaps experimentation in the Weezer camp means crafting songs that overstay their welcome – especially since the lyrics stink and the nifty guitar solos are mostly missing. Only “Pork and Beans” – which was likely cobbled together on autopilot to meet label demands for more commercial material – is worth a damn. This record sounds like band democracy run amok and a “fragile auteur” getting so fat and happy that he confuses his melodic dicking around for actual songwriting that might mean something.
Sometimes a band sticks it to the fans and to the man and makes the great album that they always wanted to make. And sometimes a band crawls up its own ass in an attempt to scale the pop charts.
I hate this album. I hope it gets pancreatic cancer.
[...] As a well-supported, self-sustaining conspiracy theory, the “Rivers Cobain” theory is no JFK assassination. However, what I found poignant and suitably sad about this idea was that — if we take Kurt’s word for it — Cobain was a man who felt hemmed in by his fans and his band. And if he did fake his death to escape these shackles and start a new band, he ultimately wound up in yet another band that couldn’t live up to the expectations of either critics or fans. [...]
Naw, fuck that.
You’re going over the top on this one. So they made a shitty generic record, but it had a few moments that were passable. Weezer has been doing this for awhile now.
What makes this album different? Rivers still wants to write killer pop songs. He’s stuck on that trip. Don’t you think it’s likely he’ll continue to throw shit against the wall until something sticks? What makes you think he isn’t capable of coming up with anything good in the future?
He still knows how to come with songs like “Pork and Beans”, “Keep Fishin’” and “Perfect Situation”. There’s still some life left in him.