Weezer - Weezer
Artist profile:
Weezer
Release Date: 16/06/08
Label: Polydor
Rating: *
Some things never change. The turning of leaves in autumn, the satisfaction of scoring a goal, the excitement of picking up a guitar for the first time, and the crushing realisation that you're as musically gifted as George Best was sober. All these things remain constant through the passage of time. So does Weezer's protracted and painful decline.
'Weezer' is their sixth album, and their fifth effort in trying to replicate the quality and success of their first album, also called 'Weezer'. They have three albums named after themselves. Some may call it a novelty, others lazy. The first album is called 'Blue', the middle one 'Green', and this one 'Red' because of the prevalent colours on the album covers.
'Blue' was very good; a solid American rock album made by middle-class nerdy guys with not one weak song, and, in 'The World Has Turned And Left Me Here' a bona-fide classic. Since then all the albums have been disappointments (yes, even 'Pinkerton', for the die-hards out there), containing two or three good songs each, such as 'Hash Pipe' or 'Island In The Sun' (which would be released as singles) with the rest being average or poor album songs. A good indication to the quality of a Weezer album is the strength of the first single. Even with the 'topical' youtube stars video, 'Pork And Beans' removed all hope before things begun. It's a dire song that smacks of 'run of the mill', with not one note digressing from the Rivers Cuomo 'How To Write 800 Songs In Your Life With Only 20 Of Them Being Any Good’ manual that he keeps in his yoga mat.
Indeed the shit-named Rivers (he was born between two rivers in New York – his siblings are probably called Skyscrapers and Crack-Whores Cuomo) and his band-mates seem to enjoy the simpler things in life. Their lyrics, for example on the first song 'Troublemaker', include 'Put me in a special school/ Cos I am such a fool', 'Who needs stupid books/ They are for petty crooks' and 'Marrying a bi-atch/ Having seven ki-ads' are truly ghastly in their artlessness. Who needs stupid books? You do. Get a vocabulary and a fucking imagination.
With the whole band writing and singing on this album people were expecting big things. Why? Having four average songwriters is more likely to make things worse rather than better, the same way piling four cars on top of each other doesn’t make one big super-car. It just makes a useless mess.
Unfortunately 'Troublemaker' is not the weakest song on the album. 'The Greatest Man That Ever Lived' and 'Everybody Get Dangerous' are horrible creations that even Jon 'Pop Beelzebub' Bon Jovi himself would be embarrassed about. There is an element here that these songs are designed to take the piss – 'nerds pretending to be cool' humour and all that. Even with this twist it’s still horrible, predictable, unfunny offal for Americans who want to be edgy but don’t listen to metal because the dark imagery may offend Jesus. There isn’t the smart, witty lyrics of Flight of the Conchords, or the quality music mixed with humorous 'super-coolness' of Electric Six. There isn’t even the predictable yet enjoyable stab at pop-culture that Weird Al Yankovic provides. If something’s deliberately bad then it can be good ironically, but this stuff is just weak. And [b]Rivers[/]b is not a nerd, he’s a faux-nerd; a mainstream accessible front man of a successful rock band who dresses a certain way because he knows his market.
In 'Everybody Get Dangerous' the ending lazily copies the beginning shouts and bongos of Rolling Stones’ 'Sympathy For The Devil'. In 'Dreamin'', they’ve clearly been listening to a lot of early Silverchair and decided to 'mix it up' with some Beach Boys. 'I'm dreamin' in the evening/I'm dreamin' on through the day/And when I'm dreamin' I know that it's ok/ooh-ooh oh'. No, it’s not Billie in the late 90s. No it's not the cast of South Pacific. It's the band that sang 'The Sweater Song' and 'Hash Pipe'. Towards the end they sing 'I don’t wanna get with your program', which is probably their version of a powerful message like Zack De La Rocha screaming 'Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me' for Rage Against The Machine. This is truly awful stuff.
And then there are the serious, quiet songs. Luckily, two of these are not that bad. 'Heart Songs' is less formulaic and more thoughtfully written than any other song on the album, describing their major influences. The verses are well-constructed lists of musical greats, although the chorus is simple rubbish where it appears some of the lines are put in place just because they rhyme, the same way a seven year old might do (this is representative of the whole album).
The closing track (before the two UK bonus covers), 'The Angel And The One' is this album's 'Say It Ain't So', a quiet tune that builds up well into a stadium-rock crescendo. Although this is less fresh and more pretentious than the 'Blue Album' song, it's still a welcome change of pace from the middle-of-the-road 'rock' crap that fills up the rest of the album, with some intelligent song craft and lyrics that, for once, don’t make you wince with pain and furrow your brow in bewilderment.
But then they stink the place up with 'Cold Dark World', with Rivers rapping like a shit Eminem, even going so far as thieving his style of rapping from Marshall Mathers EP album track 'The Way I Am'. 'Automatic' is another song that sounds like Enrique Iglesias if he wanted to 'rock it up'.
To conclude, this album is a major disappointment that should be thrown away. If you want to laugh, and then despair, at how bad a famous band can be and still sell records (no doubt this will probably go gold in America) then this is perfect. If you want some tuneful, inoffensive American rock with humour then We Are Scientists piss on Weezer from a great height.
Muhammad Odeh
Weezer Myspace
Buy Weezer CDs | Buy Weezer mp3s | Buy Weezer Tickets | Buy Weezer Merch
Release Date: 16/06/08
Label: Polydor
Rating: *
Some things never change. The turning of leaves in autumn, the satisfaction of scoring a goal, the excitement of picking up a guitar for the first time, and the crushing realisation that you're as musically gifted as George Best was sober. All these things remain constant through the passage of time. So does Weezer's protracted and painful decline.
'Weezer' is their sixth album, and their fifth effort in trying to replicate the quality and success of their first album, also called 'Weezer'. They have three albums named after themselves. Some may call it a novelty, others lazy. The first album is called 'Blue', the middle one 'Green', and this one 'Red' because of the prevalent colours on the album covers.
'Blue' was very good; a solid American rock album made by middle-class nerdy guys with not one weak song, and, in 'The World Has Turned And Left Me Here' a bona-fide classic. Since then all the albums have been disappointments (yes, even 'Pinkerton', for the die-hards out there), containing two or three good songs each, such as 'Hash Pipe' or 'Island In The Sun' (which would be released as singles) with the rest being average or poor album songs. A good indication to the quality of a Weezer album is the strength of the first single. Even with the 'topical' youtube stars video, 'Pork And Beans' removed all hope before things begun. It's a dire song that smacks of 'run of the mill', with not one note digressing from the Rivers Cuomo 'How To Write 800 Songs In Your Life With Only 20 Of Them Being Any Good’ manual that he keeps in his yoga mat.
Indeed the shit-named Rivers (he was born between two rivers in New York – his siblings are probably called Skyscrapers and Crack-Whores Cuomo) and his band-mates seem to enjoy the simpler things in life. Their lyrics, for example on the first song 'Troublemaker', include 'Put me in a special school/ Cos I am such a fool', 'Who needs stupid books/ They are for petty crooks' and 'Marrying a bi-atch/ Having seven ki-ads' are truly ghastly in their artlessness. Who needs stupid books? You do. Get a vocabulary and a fucking imagination.
With the whole band writing and singing on this album people were expecting big things. Why? Having four average songwriters is more likely to make things worse rather than better, the same way piling four cars on top of each other doesn’t make one big super-car. It just makes a useless mess.
Unfortunately 'Troublemaker' is not the weakest song on the album. 'The Greatest Man That Ever Lived' and 'Everybody Get Dangerous' are horrible creations that even Jon 'Pop Beelzebub' Bon Jovi himself would be embarrassed about. There is an element here that these songs are designed to take the piss – 'nerds pretending to be cool' humour and all that. Even with this twist it’s still horrible, predictable, unfunny offal for Americans who want to be edgy but don’t listen to metal because the dark imagery may offend Jesus. There isn’t the smart, witty lyrics of Flight of the Conchords, or the quality music mixed with humorous 'super-coolness' of Electric Six. There isn’t even the predictable yet enjoyable stab at pop-culture that Weird Al Yankovic provides. If something’s deliberately bad then it can be good ironically, but this stuff is just weak. And [b]Rivers[/]b is not a nerd, he’s a faux-nerd; a mainstream accessible front man of a successful rock band who dresses a certain way because he knows his market.
In 'Everybody Get Dangerous' the ending lazily copies the beginning shouts and bongos of Rolling Stones’ 'Sympathy For The Devil'. In 'Dreamin'', they’ve clearly been listening to a lot of early Silverchair and decided to 'mix it up' with some Beach Boys. 'I'm dreamin' in the evening/I'm dreamin' on through the day/And when I'm dreamin' I know that it's ok/ooh-ooh oh'. No, it’s not Billie in the late 90s. No it's not the cast of South Pacific. It's the band that sang 'The Sweater Song' and 'Hash Pipe'. Towards the end they sing 'I don’t wanna get with your program', which is probably their version of a powerful message like Zack De La Rocha screaming 'Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me' for Rage Against The Machine. This is truly awful stuff.
And then there are the serious, quiet songs. Luckily, two of these are not that bad. 'Heart Songs' is less formulaic and more thoughtfully written than any other song on the album, describing their major influences. The verses are well-constructed lists of musical greats, although the chorus is simple rubbish where it appears some of the lines are put in place just because they rhyme, the same way a seven year old might do (this is representative of the whole album).
The closing track (before the two UK bonus covers), 'The Angel And The One' is this album's 'Say It Ain't So', a quiet tune that builds up well into a stadium-rock crescendo. Although this is less fresh and more pretentious than the 'Blue Album' song, it's still a welcome change of pace from the middle-of-the-road 'rock' crap that fills up the rest of the album, with some intelligent song craft and lyrics that, for once, don’t make you wince with pain and furrow your brow in bewilderment.
But then they stink the place up with 'Cold Dark World', with Rivers rapping like a shit Eminem, even going so far as thieving his style of rapping from Marshall Mathers EP album track 'The Way I Am'. 'Automatic' is another song that sounds like Enrique Iglesias if he wanted to 'rock it up'.
To conclude, this album is a major disappointment that should be thrown away. If you want to laugh, and then despair, at how bad a famous band can be and still sell records (no doubt this will probably go gold in America) then this is perfect. If you want some tuneful, inoffensive American rock with humour then We Are Scientists piss on Weezer from a great height.
Muhammad Odeh
Weezer Myspace
Buy Weezer CDs | Buy Weezer mp3s | Buy Weezer Tickets | Buy Weezer Merch
Comments
robert
10 Jul 2008, 14:58
10 Jul 2008, 14:58
i agree
Chris
16 Jul 2008, 21:55
16 Jul 2008, 21:55
I have never ever heard a music critic call Pinkerton a disappointment before. If that is your opinion then thats fine, but its a bit stupid becoming a music critic if you are going to make statements that pretty much everybody in the music world knows are untrue.
joeyromeo
18 Jul 2008, 01:40
18 Jul 2008, 01:40
there are so many factual errors in this article it's as if it was written by a third-grader struggling to cobble together a week-long book report in the 30 minutes before the schoolteacher walks in the room
Peachman
18 Jul 2008, 16:03
18 Jul 2008, 16:03
Wow, Did Rivers steal your girlfriend or something? His brother's name is Leaves by the way, not crack-whore. It's cool to rip on people's names though; maybe you're just pissed because yours' is Muhammad Odeh and you can't get on a plane without being cavity searched.
Sam
18 Jul 2008, 21:32
18 Jul 2008, 21:32
Well, he's right, this album is nearly completely awful.
Wold91
20 Jul 2008, 01:51
20 Jul 2008, 01:51
Tell me? Is it Rivers rapping in the Cold Dark World? No it is Scott Shriner. And The Angel And The One is not like the classic Say it Ain't so, its more like Only In Dreams
And Pinkerton is not a dissapointment, and the other albums are not failures!
This is the most unprofessional article I've ever read. And so much unrelevant stuff here to..
You should get fired!
And Pinkerton is not a dissapointment, and the other albums are not failures!
This is the most unprofessional article I've ever read. And so much unrelevant stuff here to..
You should get fired!
Knee Grow
21 Jul 2008, 02:18
21 Jul 2008, 02:18
Wow. Peachman just shat on you, and he totally had the right to. The Red Album is probably their best since Pinkerton (Fact: Pinkerton is the complete opposite of failure). And you need to get some of your facts straight. Cold Dark World and Automatic were sung by the other bandmates, not Cuomo.
Muhammad Odeh
22 Jul 2008, 23:34
22 Jul 2008, 23:34
Hahahaha! Love the racist little slant on my name, that was excellent. I never this many people viewed rocklouder, let alone liked such shit music, so this is nice.
Just because most people say something, doesn't mean you should agree with them, especially in a subjective art form such as music. Pinkerton was roundly criticised by the media when it first came out, and Cuomo himself said he hated it, only to come around after it got praised to say he loved how it was 'dark' and what it meant to him, which shows how much integrity he has.
Everybody is entitled to their opinion. Same with reviewers. Apologies for the mistake on Scott Shriner's lyrics, but if someone knows it's shit, then knowing who sung it is merely academic.
Just because most people say something, doesn't mean you should agree with them, especially in a subjective art form such as music. Pinkerton was roundly criticised by the media when it first came out, and Cuomo himself said he hated it, only to come around after it got praised to say he loved how it was 'dark' and what it meant to him, which shows how much integrity he has.
Everybody is entitled to their opinion. Same with reviewers. Apologies for the mistake on Scott Shriner's lyrics, but if someone knows it's shit, then knowing who sung it is merely academic.
