Weezer Red Album CD

The third self-titled album by Weezer mixes the hooky sound of their 1994 and 2001 releases (known as the "blue" and "green" albums, respectively) with the experimental tendencies of efforts like PINKERTON. Like its eponymously titled cousins, Weezer's sixth release overall (destined to become known as "the red album") sports a full frontal picture of the band, dressed this time in costumes that call to mind the Village People. Cheekiness has always been central to Weezer's aesthetic: their music takes an arch, outsider's approach to rock while still rocking out in earnest, channeling the awkwardness of the bookish geek through a cranked-up amplifier.
This latest WEEZER embraces this contradiction with glee. With a hook-heavy, singalong melody driven by powerhouse guitars, lead single "Pork and Beans" is a subversive ditty about the pressures of tailoring one's image and sound for commercial ends. "Troublemaker," another anti-conformist tract, is wrapped in a tune tasty as cotton candy. This is classic Weezer: sure-fire pop songs that play both sides of the alternative/ mainstream fence. Yet the experimental aspects of the band are also represented on tunes like "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived," which brings together Southern rap, heavy metal, religious hymns, and police sirens in one song. Production by Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee makes the songs gleam, but it's the tunefulness, cleverness, and irresistibility of Weezer's music that makes this another winner in the band's discography.
An old critical cliché is that eponymous albums are statements of purpose, so what to make of Weezer and their third color-coded self-titled album? Well, the band proves that axiom true, as every one of these eponymous efforts functions as an act of introduction, from their 1994 Blue debut to their 2001 Green comeback to 2008's Red Album, where Rivers Cuomo turns many of the group's long-standing rules upside down. This isn't a radical sonic makeover -- ever a pop formalist, Rivers has Weezer stick to their signatures of big guitars and bigger hooks -- but rather a question of attitude, as Cuomo loosens up as he stares down his impending middle age, choosing to get silly rather than serious. He tears down his self-imposed three-minute barriers, writing two long-form suites (and another track that clocks in over five minutes), he sneers at Timbaland's hitmaking prowess in "Pork and Beans," he never avoids his age, whether he's making asides to Rogaine or indulging in warm nostalgia in the pseudo-"In the Garage" sequel "Heart Songs" and, most importantly, he steals a page from the Noel Gallagher playbook and deliberately shares the spotlight with his bandmates. Not for nothing does Weezer cover "The Weight" as a bonus track on one of the international editions of the Red Album -- nowadays, everybody in Weezer gets a chance to sing lead, just like the Band did way back when. Bassist Scott Shriner is given Cuomo's mildly creepy original "Cold Dark World" to sing, but longtime fellow travelers, guitarist Brian Bell and drummer Pat Wilson, write and sing their own tunes ("Thought I Knew" and "Automatic," respectively), turning in sweet pop tunes that complement Cuomo's style even if they help give the Red Album a bit of a ragged edge, especially when compared to the brutal efficiency of Maladroit and the oversized, highly buffed Make Believe. Of course, the very point of the Red Album is for Weezer to not take things so seriously, to reconnect to their beginnings while taking the advantage of their rock star status to act seriously goofy. This freedom is entirely within the mind -- musically, this is all easily identifiable as Weezer -- but it invigorates such seemingly by the books rockers as "Troublemaker," where the loopy lyrics are as prominent and irresistible as the hooks. As the album opener, it sets the stage for a cheerfully restless record, one where all the parts don't fit and it's better because of it, as it has a wild, willing perSpin (p.96) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "'Pork and Beans' and 'Troublemaker' rally against conformity while supplying spiffy hooks."
Entertainment Weekly (pp.68-69) - "[Cuomo's] sharp sense of melody is undeniably intact..."
Kerrang (Magazine) (p.46) - "[There is] melody to spare, a sense of compositional and tonal genius that makes this by turns a playful, witty, weird, confusing and mesmerizing set."
Kerrang (Magazine) (p.62) - Ranked #11 in Kerrang's Best Albums Of The Year 2008 -- "[E]ffortlessly catchy tunes."
Q (Magazine) (p.111) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Everything is supercharged and melodic, like a poppy version of Nirvana..."