Weezer, 5.1

I was thinking three very different things about this new Weezer album. I'm going to splice them all together so that the review will lack coherence, which can be viewed symbolically as my continued confusion with the Weezer catalogue.

Weezer, it has been said, reached their artistic pinnacle with Pinkerton. I tend to believe this, for the most part because I didn't like Pinkerton when I first heard it. This has, for a while, been my measuring stick: If my initial impression of the weezer song/album is unfavorable I have tended to liking the song/album a lot upon further listening; if I liked it right off the bat I grew weary and loathsome of it. For example, I did not like El Scorcho when I first heard it, and now am of the opinion that it is one of the greatest weezer songs in the world. Also, Island In The Sun, easy to listen to fun poppy rock, I hate hate hate. And this is the problem with the new album. I like it (which means I won't) and I don't like it (which means I might). I won't know for sure for another two months when I'll either catch myself humming a melody and realize it's from that weezer cd I bought two months ago, or, I'll hear a single on the radio and feel the need to break it with the nearest heavy object preferably a sledgehammer (which are, handily, almost always nearby).
See, here's the thing: Weezer has done, with at least three of these new tracks, exactly what Blink 182 did with Takeoff Your Pants and Jacket (which, I hope you are never subjected to ever). They borrowed opening riffs, they borrowed melodies, they borrowed rhythms and then tweaked them a little bit. The result is a disc that sounds very similar to earlier work. Which, let's be honest, is a total cop out. In the case of Blink 182, nearly 100% of the cd sucked. In Weezer's case...maybe not. See, there are two or three opening riffs that hark back to The Green Album and Maladroit, but the rest seem...original, but not necessarily good.
They've departed from their earlier artistic brilliance. That's not to say it's not a good cd to have in your collection, because, well it might be, but it's no Pinkerton. Which brings me to another point. Leave these guys alone! Shouldn't we be celebrating that musical masterpiece instead of ripping apart any further effort this group turns out as not being up to snuff? Yes, Pinkerton was brilliant, and maybe that's the sum total of all Weezer's brilliance, maybe they used it all up on the first two albums. So be it. If this is true, don't buy anything else by them ever, don't get The Green Album, don't get Maladroit, and don't get Make Believe. On the other hand, if you're a Weezer fan, even a little bit, then go for it. By far the album I hate the most is The Green Album, it lacks lyrical depth, it lacks powerful music, and it lacks distortion, which I love. And that's one of my problems with Make Believe, lyrically it's more like Green than anything else, but musically it's more like Maladroit. Cheesey lyrics, heavy guitars, this might be a great show to see live, but maybe it doesn't stack up with what we've come to expect from weezer (which, as I mentioned before, may only be a freak thing...maybe this is what we should expect from them and Pinkerton was just a fluke)
Finally I have a theory. Look at the covers of the first four albums. Weezer, Pinkerton, Weezer (The Green Album), Maladroit. Notice that we colloquially call the third disc "the green album" because it's green, but really the only thing on the cover is the band's name: "weezer" just like, just like the first self-titled cd. Maybe this is a separate run for this group. Maybe the first two were like, Hey, here's this group of wonderful songs that you will love forever, and maybe then they decided that hey, we can't keep this up, let's start again, but this time, with two minutes and thirty seconds of radio-friendly power pop at a time. So that's why the green album should maybe be called "weezer" like it's the launch of a new band. And, if we're looking at it like that, then this new band has three albums, the first one sucks, the second one's ok, and the third one sucks a little but isn't as bad as the first one.

But I'm a fan. I'm listening to Make Believe these days, and whether I'll like it or not in a few weeks remains to be heard. So, to all you out there giving this band crap because nothing has approached the heights of Pinkerton lay the hell off of them. How would you feel if your creative masterpiece was finished when you were eighteen and now you can't even draw a smiley face without catching heat, because now people won't shut up about that masterpiece, hmm? I have no idea how you'd feel. The point is, compare this album to Maladroit, not Pinkerton. That's like comparing The Matrix Revolutions to The Matrix. Of course it's not going to stand up, it was terrible. But, if you compare it to The Matrix Reloaded, well, at least it's palatable. (Maybe that's a bad parallel, The Matrix Revolutions sucked. Make Believe, maybe not).


to summarize: I don't know how I feel about this new Weezer cd. I do know that I hate the opinion that Pinkerton is the be-all-end-all of music. I also know that I loved The Matrix Reloaded.

-tom
recommended download:
Weezer, In The Garage, and Only In Dreams