Weezer – Weezer (The Red Album)

Geffen Records 2008

Rating: 5/10

Despite all the turmoil Weezer has been through in the past few years, including the multiple band hiatuses, frontman River Cuomo’s focus on school, and the critical beatings they’ve taken for their past couple of albums, Weezer is proof that, in some ways, not much has changed at all. Again they’re releasing a self-titled album, again their new hit single has Cuomo namedropping cultural touchstones like Timbaland and Oakleys and proclaiming his own geeky individuality, and, as has been happening too often in the new millennium, again they have released another sub-par album.

They start out strong, “Troublemaker” bouncing along on a simple riff and Cuomo’s often-intimidated-never-matched nerd-rock lyrics. Cuomo’s days of penning consistently witty lyricisms are long gone (“who needs stupid books? / they are for petty crooks” is one particularly unworthy line), but the song has the Weezer spirit of old, the “I-don’t-give-a-damn” attitude that characterized their debut. When Cuomo sings “doing things my own way / and never giving up,” you can’t accuse the guy of being a liar.

“The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)” is a resounding endorsement of that above credo, throwing any pop conventions Weezer may have previously lived by out the window in a six-minute experiment. Chugging arena rock riffs? Check. Cuomo falsetto? Check. Shuffling country? Check. Spoken-word bravado? Check. It’s not exactly the most modest thing they have ever written, but it’s charming in its boldness and quite entertaining.

Hit single “Pork and Beans” continues the album’s streak, and the song is another blast from the past, all “Buddy Holly”-esque guitars and sing-a-long chorus that gave me high hopes for the rest of the album. In the same lyrical vein as “Troublemaker” and a good portion of the rest of the disc, it’s their best song in years.

But like a joke with a fantastic setup and a wretched punchline, the band starts to drop the ball with the following songs. “Heart Songs” is an endearing acoustic tune about Cuomo’s influences, but it never goes anywhere and the lyrics get sappier and sappier as the song continues. What we’re left with is a slightly embarrassing torch song for Cuomo’s heroes, a song that seems to have forgotten anything about melody that its subjects taught.

“Everybody Get Dangerous” is laughably bad, a rave-up about throwing rotten eggs into traffic and breaking the speed limit that is, coming from Weezer, about as rebellious as not eating your vegetables at dinner. “Dreamin’” is the last gasp of hope before the album spirals into darkness, a passable Blue Album imitation that is wistful and appropriately hummable, although the last fifteen seconds almost sink it.

And then an odd thing happens; Cuomo stops singing. “Thought I Knew” and “Cold Dark World” features guitarist Brian Bell and bassist Scott Shriner, respectively. The first is a bland pop-rocker that ends up sounding too much like something Matchbox 20 might produce, and Shriner’s disastrous rapping scars “Cold Dark World”. The trifecta is completed by “Automatic,” sung by drummer Pat Wilson, which is made marginally better by a gigantic rock riff that overshadows the rest of the song, but even then it falls flat on a combination of bad lyrics and mediocre singing.

The album ends on the nearly 7-minute “The Angel And The One,” their attempt at an epic closer a’la “Only In Dreams.” The feeling of the song, however, is lost in stadium-rock bombast and the unmemorable melody, with the final two minutes inexorably wasted by pointless ambient noise and strings.

Weezer is getting slowly and steadily older, and despite their occasional successful tries to seize the zeitgeist with songs like “Pork and Beans,” it seems inevitable that the eternally youthful nerds are losing their touch. Weezer is a definite improvement over their horrendous last effort, but it’s almost like trying to save a sinking ship with buckets; the good is too little, too late.

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