Heave Media

Red is not Weezer's color

Weezer returns with their sixth album.

Weezer

The Red Album

Released on Jun 03, 2008

Last year, Rivers Cuomo announced that Weezer was calling it quits, until they decided that another album needed to be made. Frustrated by poor offerings of Maladroit and Make Believe, it seemed that Rivers and the gang would never be able to recapture the magic of The Blue Album and Pinkerton. He tried a number of things to motivate himself, from taking a vow of celibacy that would supposedly last until the band made another good album, to finally graduating from Harvard, yet nothing seemed to work. The constant quest to return to form continues with the release of yet another album of a different color, The Red Album.

Unfortunately for Weezer, the best song on The Red Album is the one that they chose to release first. "Pork and Beans" has already become Weezer's most popular song to date, reaching the top spot on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart in just three weeks. Lyrically, the song is a response to criticism by Geffen Records, saying that the band needed to take its sound in a more commercial direction. The result is a giant musical middle finger. Rivers sings, "I'mma do the things that I wanna do, I ain't got a thing to prove to you" and later "I don't give a hoot about what you think." Careful, record execs... if you make Rivers Cuomo angry, he'll proceed to write a song about you that goes on to become his band's most popular song ever. The song is catchy and has that certain quality that made The Blue Album and Pinkerton so acclaimed. If only every song on the album had been about the same subject matter. Disappointingly, the good qualities of The Red Album begin and end with "Pork and Beans".

Elements of certain songs could have been great, had they been expanded upon. "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" is an exercise in musical ADD. Every twenty-five seconds or so, the song jumps between genres. Beginning with a simple classical piano hook that is actually pretty decent, things quickly shift to hip-hop and on through other musical territory that should never have been attempted. The song is pretty much as conceited as the title suggests. Rivers abandons singing at one point, frankly speaking in what only sounds like a skinny white guy trying to sound badass...and failing miserably. You have to give Weezer a little credit for at least trying something new with the structure of the song, but there are, at most, three sections that leave you wanting more. Just as soon as a hook is set, it's abandoned and a new section begins. This ends up being more annoying and dissonant than it is successful.

There are songs on the album that leave you scratching your head, wondering just what the hell Weezer and their record producers Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee were thinking. "Thought I Knew" is a complete departure from the overall sound of the album, and really sounds like it's from a completely different artist, let alone a different album. Rivers gets sentimental on "Heart Songs," but for someone who didn't grow up listening to the songs he mentions, there's no connection made. The song would hit home for someone who grew up on the same music as Rivers, but in the much more likely event that the listener had a completely different personal history with music, the emotional effect is lost.

It would be easy to go on for quite a while about the shortcomings of The Red Album because as a whole, it fails to deliver. Weezer tried to grasp what makes their best stuff great, and succeeded with "Pork and Beans." However, that's just three minutes and nine seconds of an album that totals 41 minutes, 54 seconds. The rest of that time is just plain frustrating.

Posted by Cory Roop on Jun 04, 2008 @ 12:00 am