Weezer, pt. 2: Anthony's Album Guide
GLIB XENNIAL ALERT: I always said I wouldn't post a part of an album guide without at least one 8, but I've decided to make an exception here. The better to explicate my stance on Weezer, the better to soothe souls scarred by the praise in pt. 1, and Weezer's certainly successful enough to take the guff. So rest easy, lovers and haters. You’ll both be okay. My handy dandy profoundly subjective numerical rating scheme is explained here.
Make Believe (2005) 4
Weezer [The Red Album] (2008) 5
Raditude (2009) 6
Hurley (2010) 5
Death To False Metal (2010) 6
In their first decade as a band, Weezer recorded two of the most treasured rock albums of the ‘90s - at least if you’re under 50. The Blue Album and Pinkerton merged indie rock neurosis and nerd pride with hair metal flash and AOR bombast: a felony to some, but rapture for many. Once their stature among xennials and under was revealed to otherwise antipathetic elders at the turn of the decade, two albums of yummy alt-radio bubblegum, The Green Album and Maladroit, restored their commercial clout. A third appeared to be on the way in 2003, with 28 demos shared online. Then, suddenly, the demos disappeared and a surprising degree of silence followed. It was eventually revealed producer Rick Rubin had re-introduced Weezerdomo Rivers Cuomo to Buddhist meditation (Cuomo already lived on an ashram as a child in Connecticut). The practice was reportedly inspiring deeper, more intimate thoughts than heard on hits like “Hash Pipe” and “Keep Fishin’.”
First, a '90s memory that makes me want to go back there.
Weezer’s belated fifth album, Make Believe, came in early 2005. Preceding it was “Beverly Hills,” which became their only Top 10 single and earned their first Grammy nomination. As the band whams through the chord progression of Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker,” Rivers explains that he’d always dreamed of being a big star, but now, though filming the song’s video at the Playboy Mansion (yikes), he’s accepted he’s simply a dork who will never feel comfortable among those to the manor born. God, I wish they’d just covered “The Joker” instead. They even could have kept the wah-wah solo!
Similarly, Make Believe faceplants over the fine line between stupid and clever. Granted, folks who thought Weezer was always stupid - derogatory or non - don’t get the big deal. But the late-blooming, post-adolescent neuroses of the ‘90s have been replaced by insipid, post-therapy prattle delivered as cutely as possible, Rubin goading the band towards generic aughts-rock sheen. “Perfect Situation,” despite whiffs like “why am I so obviously insane,” or rhyming “hero” with “zero,” is blessed with a wordless chorus that’s a straight shot of alterna-ache to the gut. “This Is Such A Pity,” with its Europe (the band) guitar licks and silly synth, aims for cathartic kitsch and nails it. But after that pleasant pair comes power ballad after power ballad, where Brian Wilson meets Cheap Trick now means “The Flame” with lyrics by Eugene Landy.
Still makes me feel like a '70s Rod Stewart fan coming across "Love Touch" on MTV.
“My Best Friend” was originally intended for a Shrek soundtrack (“I hope you believe me, and I speak sincerely, I mean it when I tell you that I need you”), but no similar excuse is known for “Pardon Me” and its “I may not be a perfect soul, but I can learn self-control.” “We Are All On Drugs” is basically “Kicks” by Paul Revere & The Raiders, except the melody is more “The Diarrhea Song” and the arrangement is more “Janie’s Got A Gun.” The penultimate “Freak Me Out” is a tender, twinkly thing that might sound even better in isolation than whatever minor marvel is hiding near the end of an ‘80s Beach Boys album. But I’m not racing to prove it.
Despite the agony suffered by me and Ms. Jones’ character in that SNL sketch, Make Believe brought the band back to platinum. After the tour, Cuomo finally earned that degree from Harvard and got married. Guitarist Brian Bell and drummer Patrick Wilson worked on side projects and even played the Velvet Underground in the movie Factory Girl. The same one where Hayden Christiansen plays Bob Dylan, and a bowl of oatmeal plays Andy Warhol. Actually, Guy Pearce plays Warhol. But I bet you almost believed me.
These memes are almost twenty years old.
The Red Album, Weezer’s third self-titled release, arrived in 2008. On the cover, Wilson wears a sweater over a shirt and tie, bassist Scott Shriner has his typical “Butch” Al Yankovic look, a mustachioed Cuomo wears a funny cowboy hat and Bell wears a fedora I pray was meant to be funny. The album is even more of a batty grab-bag, partly due to how it was recorded. The best songs are the singles helmed by Snow Patrol producer Jacknife Lee, after Geffen heard the rest and demanded singles. “Pork And Beans” whimpers grudgingly about label advice before delivering unabashed Blue Album crunch on the chorus, and “Troublemaker” is at least the zippy kind of nonsense that gets you in a Happy Madison trailer. Then there are a handful of rather audacious numbers from sessions with Rick Rubin, Weezer going full Queen with multi-part symphonic madness, saucy guitar funk and…well, actually, I don’t think Queen ever let Freddie Mercury babble about the music he liked as a kid before that one album changed everything. For Cuomo, it was Nirvana’s Nevermind (“[it] had a baby on it/ he was naked on it/ then I heard the chords that broke the chains upon me”). I wonder what it was for Mercury. Are You Experienced? The Elvis comeback special? Maybe he knew better than to tell us like this. He knew a lot Rivers doesn’t.
Weirdest of all, are the trio of self-produced songs near the end, each written and sung by a member of the band not named Rivers Cuomo (actually, Cuomo gets a cut on Shriner’s copyright). Bell, already heard duetting on a “sonata” (roll over in your grave, Beethoven!), sounds like a generic pop-punk singer with a head cold. Shriner sounds like Rivers with a head cold. Wilson sounds like some oaf who’s been giving it to your mom, despite a head cold. (I hope to die never having heard their side-projects.) The funniest thing about this “Shitty Beatles”/“what if Sloan was fucking terrible?” interlude is that it wasn’t some CCR Mardi Gras folly right before a break-up. The line-up that coalesced on Maladroit remains intact almost twenty-five years later. Yet no one other than Rivers has sung lead on an album track in the nearly twenty years since The Red Album (be warned, they apparently handle covers and old hits live sometimes). I guess once was enough, and, sadly, nobody can take the accomplishment away from them.
This ain't your daddy's (thankfully non-album) Kenny G feature, even if Weezer claims it is.
The follow-up came just over a year later, veering as wildly to the right as The Red Album veered to the left. Instead of further exploring the esoteric and/or godawful muses of the quartet, a clown car full of song doctors were invited to help Weezer charm the mainstream. Alterna-pop hand Butch Walker (“1985,” “My Happy Ending,” Lindsay Lohan’s cover of “I Want You To Want Me”) produced the first single, a fun little country-rock stomp about proposing (awww), as well as an All-American Rejects co-write, a Jermaine Dupri co-write and…”The Girl Got Hot” (“Satin tights, boots so white/ leopard handbag out of sight…dyno-mite!”). Jacknife Lee handled the promo single “Tripping Down The Freeway,” the “Hindi version” of “Love Is The Answer,” and two more typical ‘00s Weezer songs, including a Pat original sung by Rivers. Polow Da Don produced the Lil Wayne feature, “Can’t Stop Partying” (“okay, bitch, it’s Weezer and it’s Weezy”), and Dr. Luke enabled Rivers to moan the words “I’m Your Daddy.” The album’s name: Raditude. If you’ve blocked out any of these details out, I understand and please forgive me.
Irony of ironies, I consider Raditude the best album of their initial “then they became the worst band of all time” era (no spoilers on whether anything’s as good as Raditude in decade three). While little is crucial, and close attention to the lyrics could lead to an aneurysm (“you withheld the physical love I need,” “me and JD chillin’ in the shack/ sharing Chiclets from the same pack”), most of the musical offenses are on the ingredients label. If you can indulge the notion that Rivers Cuomo’s “gotta have Patron,” Raditude is indeed the varied, professional product they paid for. But then I didn’t hate those Timbaland albums that sounded like a fantasy iPod full of randos either. Time only turns such absurdities into bubbly time capsules.
Jackass 3-D is older now than Pinkerton was then.
Having finished their Geffen contract with their most pop-embracing album ever…Weezer then signed to Epitaph, the punk indie label created by Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz. Not Anti-, the sister label meant for acts not aesthetically aligned with Bad Religion. Epitaph. Which leads me to believe 2010’s Hurley is the first album on Epitaph to feature co-writes from Dan Wilson, Linda Perry, Desmond Child, Ryan Adams, Tony Kanal from No Doubt, and Mac Davis (yes, that Mac Davis). On the flip, Hurley (named after cover star Jorge Garcia’s character on Lost, though the clothing company put out a Weezer line soon after) is a heavier album than Raditude, with crunchier guitar and more punishing drums than we’d heard in a minute. This is most effective on the almost Andrew WK-like opener “Memories,” where the cast of Jackass 3-D cheers behind Rivers’ recollection of “when Audioslave was still Rage.” Wilson (Semisonic, every female Grammy favorite of the late ‘00s) and Child (Bon Jovi, every aging Aquanet addict of the late ‘80s) affirm why they make the big bucks, but after the horror where Rivers repeatedly growls “sex” when he means “socks,” the back half of Hurley feels almost as banal as Make Believe's, if far less grating.
In a yet another odd move (and there’s plenty of off-album quirk and clickbait I haven’t mentioned), a deluxe reissue of Pinkerton, and Death To False Metal, a compilation of spruced-up outtakes curated by Cuomo himself, arrived not even two months after Hurley. The opener is the outcome of a Youtube crowdsourcing project with more than a dozen credited contributors (I would have believed Cuomo wrote it with Matt Sharp in the ‘90s and found the tape in a drawer). The closer is an atrocious cover of Diane Warren via Toni Braxton. In between, are eight originals flimsy enough to go in the vault, but joyful enough to be fondly recalled. Titles include “Blowin’ My Stack,” “I’m A Robot” and “Trampoline,” that one featuring the chorus “trampoline, trampoline, trampoline/ you’re on my mind.” But we know coherency isn’t always a virtue with these guys.
How this didn't become Weezer's "Bohemian Rhapsody" remains absolutely no mystery today.
Was Weezer going to stay on Epitaph? Return to Geffen? Get worse? Better? Get psyched for pt 3, featuring more albums than pt. 1 and pt. 2 combined! According to some very dubious logic we’ll get into then!
If you are offended for Pat Wilson, please remember he should be living off the interest, sleeping on a large pile of money by now. If you are offended for any other reason, my e-mail is anthonyisright at gmail dot com. Or if you want to sing my praises! That's also an option.
