new music: The Red Album

Aw jeez, Weezer. You just keep finding ways to get worse. Hrm...
Like with Radiohead, I have some specific history with Weezer (missing them in their initial popular run due to my middle school ignorance of popular music; discovering them years later when the Blue Album essentially soundtracked a terrific (magical!) summer stint at writing camp; one of my favorite concert experiences ever seeing them live before their big Green Album comeback; my first officially published music review being for the Green Album in Raleigh's now defunct Spectactor Magazine). I'll admit I gave up on following them pretty much beyond the radio singles after disliking the Green Album, and those singles didn't suggest I was missing much. The ones from Maladroit, whose names I can't remember right now, were ok but not essential, and the singles from Make Believe--the atrocious "Beverly Hills" and even more atrocious "We Are All On Drugs"--were more than enough to convince me that record's bad buzz was entirely warranted.
But I suppose I was curious for this one. First single "Pork and Beans" seemed to be getting good reviews, the cover art was goofy, there was talk of a proggy epic built around the "Shaker Song"--it all sounded like Weezer was going to be fun again. Even if they wouldn't return to heights of the Blue Album and Pinkerton, they would at least not be as soul-less as they were on the Green Album or singing about how we are all ON DRUGS.
But alas, the Red Album is bad enough to actually make me nostalgic for the bland pop-punk of the Green Album.
To be fair, there are a few decent moments. Opening track "Trouble Maker" is a good rock song, and there's even some nice lead guitar punch in the second verse. The aforementioned proggy epic "Shaker song" takeoff, "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" exists, and though I didn't get much mileage from it (I'm really not at all nostalgic for lower school music class), it at least is fun and goofily endearing, and few parts of it have some nice classic Weezer guitar chug. Classic Weezer guitars also drive "Dreamin'", and it's pretty good.
The rest though is pretty disastrous. "Pork and Beans" is fine I suppose, but it strikes me as smug: Rivers Cuomo complains about having to write a hit and smarmily talks about getting Timbaland's help to "top the charts," but Weezer has been successfully topping charts for years. It all just sounds so disingenious coming from the guy who wrote "Beverly Hills" (though in its own way that song was equally as smug). Things only get worse with "Everybody Get Dangerous," which sounds like Weezer doing a shitty Red Hot Chili Peppers song.
For the first time in Weezer's history, the other guys come in to contribute songs-one each. Initially, I thought this would be an ok idea, as Rivers Cuomo clearly wasn't the font of inspiration that he used to be, and it seemed like one of the other guys might be able to more accurately nail the Weezer sound. But, nope. Hope vanishes pretty fast when guitarist Brian Bell's "Thought I Knew" starts: its got programmed beats and acoustic guitar. Individually, I like both of those things, but when put together as the prominent pieces of a song, it almost always leads to some of the worst music ever. Things get worse when Bell starts to sing in a nasty, nasally autotuned voice: the whole thing gives off an Uncle Kracker vibe. Bassist Scott Shriner (who is most certainly no Matt Sharp) sounds pretty much exactly like he looks on the album cover, which is to say, like an asshole. And the fact that, as a friend pointed out, his song "Cold Dark World" sounds like Kid Rock isn't helping Brian Bell out any. Drummer Patrick Wilson comes off best on his song, "Automatic"-it's completely unremarkable. The record is sequenced poorly too: all of River's songs (except the closing track) are at the front of the record, then we get the other guys' all in a row at the end. Obviously the songs were not recorded in this order (and Cuomos blandly sings the chorus of "Cold Dark World"), but the impression made on the listener is that Cuomos simply got bored or gave up and just left for awhile to go take a nap or buy a new couch or something.
The worst track by far, though, not just on this album but arguably in Weezer's history, is Cuomo's atrocious "Heart Songs." Listen, in concept, I'm okay with Rivers writing a salute to his own musical history, and all the guilty pleasure stuff he loves. Unfortunately, he does so fairly shittily and blandly, pretty much just listing names ("A cat named Stevens"-oy) or tossing out well-known lyrics ("it takes two to make a thing go right/ if the Fresh Prince starts a fight") until the big finish where talks about being inspired by Nirvana. What's worse than the lyrics is the horrible, horrible music Cuomos wrote to accompany his sincerity: instead of the droning guitar buzz and harmonica that accompanied this song's forerunner "In the Garage," we now get a mid-tempo ballad of acoustic guitars, canned strings, and simplistic keyboard melodies clearly set to "INSPIRATIONAL," and Cuomos sings the somewhat boyband-esque melody in a nasal whine that seems to have been borrowed from some shitty emo act Cuomos heard on the radio while driving to the studio. The whole thing sounds like an achingly sincere comedown after a big dance number on, I don't know, a Nick Carter solo-album or something. It's horrible, and genuinely embarrassing to listen to.
Actually, that pretty much sums up this record. Its tough to tell of this a result of the band not caring anymore and just doing what they want, or just not caring anymore and well, not caring. Either way, I'm done listening.