Our look at the closing lines of new music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Raditude, the seventh studio album by the jokesters who make up Weezer:
• ”Accepted on these terms, Raditude might be enjoyed for what it is — extremely catchy, fist-pumping pop — and for what it represents: escapism. Still, its flaws are obvious; the second half sags, the ballads bore, and weirdly, it’s too short. Old-school Weezer fans won’t like it, and neither will blog-rock acolytes. But that’s the point. Raditude is the murderous revenge of the middlebrow.” [Spencer Kornhaber, Spin]
• “Cuomo still turns out more functional hooks before his breakfast tequila than most bands get in a career. ‘(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To’ and ‘Put Me Back Together’ reclaim gum-snapping pop-punk from Weezer’s myriad hijackers. But how does one appropriately respond to tracks like the buffet-soundtrack sitar jam ‘Love Is the Answer’ and the Warrant-worthy ode to post-puberty ‘The Girl Got Hot?’ Maybe just relax and order a double.” [August Brown, LAT]
• ”Raditude is full of gloriously cheesy Weezer tunes, led by the ridonk geek-love anthem ‘(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To.’ He teams up with Jermaine Dupri and Lil Wayne for the hilarious ‘Can’t Stop Partying,’ and he veers into dance-pop production with Dr. Luke for ‘I’m Your Daddy,’ wowing the ladies with his moonwalk moves and cheese fondue. His willingness to make fun of his psychosexual damage only makes it more poignant. The not-quite-ironic melancholy of ‘Can’t Stop Partying’ may reflect a uniquely twisted relationship with his twisted audience. But from the sound of Raditude, Cuomo savors every minute of it.” [Rob Sheffield, RS]
• ”Ultimately, it’s Weezer’s deft mixing of immediately hummable rock with lyrics that reveal Cuomo’s own melancholy gaze on the pop landscape that makes Raditude a passionate surrender to growing up and a throw-your-arms-up-and-scream ride down the other side of the mid-life roller coaster.” [Matt Collar, Allmusic]
“the Warrant-worthy ode to post-puberty”
O RLY???
Album is 4 bucks at amazon today.
I have to say…I had grown fairly bored of Weezer, in a current sense. But the absolute rage and disgust with which the “blog-rock acolytes” have received this album, it has captured my attention and my affection and I haven’t heard Raditude yet. Extremely catchy, fist-pumping, escapist pop? Well sure! Can’t say I don’t love to be contrary, depending on the critics in question. Looking very forward to listening to the album tonight.
Just bought this on the aforementioned $4 deal. I’m a Weezer fan and have stuck with them as the album-quality curve has reset itself to its current level, and I can tell you that it’s a modern Weezer album: a few tracks that indisputably stand right alongside their best pop singles, and then a bunch of songs that could be there or not. Their best-of is still going to be beyond sick someday. Enjoy the promo campaign (Snuggies! Kenny G!). Add “…I Want You To” to your Weezer iTunes playlist. Life goes on.
I’m more or less agnostic about Weezer, but the reaction to their 2000s stuff by their fans/the blogosphere/etc. always perplexes me. When did Rivers Cuomo ever claim to Ian Curtis? These guys busted out of the gate with what pretty much amount to novelty songs as singles. I’ve never listened to PINKERTON, but doesn’t one of the tracks on it start with the lyric, “Goddamn you Japanese girls” or something like that? Point being, you can’t sell out by being what you’ve pretty much been from day one.
I wrote a little snippet on Weezer after some soul searching early in the summer.
http://www.merryswankster.com/archives/2009/06/retrohump_does.html
I’ll summarize - a lot of us think weezer started to suck after the first two albums, but did weezer really just suck all along and we didn’t know it? OR were they always the same band and only recently are we understanding this?
@swankster: [D]id weezer really just suck all along and we didn’t know it? OR were they always the same band and only recently are we understanding this?
This is THE question about Weezer, and one that has been debated many, many times on these pages. My personal take isn’t that Weezer sucks (or has ever sucked) per se, but that Rivers’ love of the cheesier side of rock and bubblegum pop is what drives him musically, and ever since Matt Sharp left the band, there is no one there to reign in those cheesier impulses. Accordingly, we get songs like Beverly Hills and Pork and Beans. Catchy, but empty.
The lone exception is, of course, Pinkerton, which I believe most Weezer fans cite as their favorite Weezer album. That record is awkward and awesome. Its is heartbreaking, while at the same time hopeful. I’ve always believed the theory that Rivers’ wrote those songs when he was in a really dark place after the sudden, monsterous and probably, unexpected success of the Blue Album, and he holed himself up in that apartment off the 10 freeway writing those songs trying to make sense of it all.
Whatever the reason (happiness I guess (I hope)) he’s never going to go there again, and without another strong band member to pull him back from his Seacrestian-side, we are stuck with meme-mining songs from here on out.