‘Red Album’ wheezes to a crawl

By Patrick Daugherty
June 4, 2008

Courtesy of Geffen Records

A new Weezer album? Say it ain’t so! The nerd-rock foursome’s sixth album brings with it a regular (Pinker)ton of musical genres.

Weezer’s third self-titled album is precisely the reason music critics exist. Still, it might be hard even for the holier-than-thou scribes of the world to make sense of Rivers Cuomo’s latest comeback: an incomprehensible, inexplicable and totally bizarre return to, not relevance, but interestingness for one of the world’s most popular rock bands.

When first single “Pork and Beans” hit the radio, it created unrealistically high expectations for the “Red Album” and a band that many complain have been over-the-hill since 2001. Its big chorus and “Blue Album”-esque guitar crunch united the faithful and at least momentarily silenced the critics.

Then seven other songs leaked.

To put it lightly, the world wasn’t ready for what mastermind/intense psycho Cuomo was getting ready to unleash — “Bohemian Rhapsody”-style epics, cartoonishly awful lyrics and a song for each of his bandmates.

From a band known for abrupt stylistic changes from album to album, “Red” is certainly their most drastic ever — and further proof that their first three sardonic masterpieces (and decent fourth LP) will never be re-created.

So, sadly, this is not Weezer’s gallant return to form but instead one more nail in their giant =W= shaped coffin. That being said, while Weezer’s surviving ‘90s peers have grown continually more and more boring on their way to obscurity (The Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, Ben Folds), Weezer at least attempts to go down swinging. The drab pro-tools ballads of Make Believe are nowhere to be found here. As one of the last remnants of an era where mainstream rock actually had melody, Weezer manages to put a face to their music.

But the aspects of the album that make it a potential last hurrah before total irrelevance are much more apparent than any upside.

Namely, Cuomo is officially out-of-touch with the audience of teens and twentysomethings he’s writing for. The “Red Album” is littered with awkward stabs at timeliness (his Timbaland shout-out), clueless lyrics about tipping over cows and Cuomo’s “Heart Songs.” They are certain to be cited as some of the worst ever in many future VH1 countdowns.

Strangely, Cuomo seems to know this. When your album features this delightful interlude — “Who needs books, they are for petty crooks/And I will learn by studying the lesson in my dreams/Turn off the T.V. cause that’s what others see/And movies are as bad as eating chocolate ice cream” — it’s hard not to. Why he doesn’t care is anybody’s guess.

When all is said and done, the “Red Album” has four unforgivably awful songs, two pretty bad ones, two pretty good ones and two great ones. As far as the two great, “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)” will surely join “Pork and Beans” as a radio hit somewhere down the road (in spite of Cuomo’s incessantly raunchy lyrics).

The two decent ones are, perhaps tellingly, from Weezers apart from Rivers. “Cold Dark World” is a creepy stalker tune sung by bassist Scott Shriner, but it has an urgency and tension missing from Cuomo’s bankrupt romps. The album’s biggest surprise is guitarist Brian Bell’s tender (kind of) and catchy “Thought I Knew.” It’s the kind of song Cuomo used to write on a regular basis.

The rest of the crap? The effortlessness of Weezer’s best work is nowhere to be found, not even in “Island in the Sun” sequel “Dreamin’.” Cuomo has chosen to enter into a brave new world of bombast and excess where few tread. Thankfully for him, his legacy was long ago secured. It’s the listeners who aren’t so lucky.

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‘Red Album’ wheezes to a crawl

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