Weezer - s/t (The Green Album)
(Universal)
Weezer's new album finds a band trying desperately to
recapture what they once embodied. As is
often the case with a band who bows out for as long as
Weezer did, they are now scrambling to
regain the position they once held.
This album wants SO badly to be their debut album,
from the similar artwork to the return to fun,
upbeat music with downbeat lyrics. However, it is entirely
missing their first album's sincerity. I put this CD into my
computer to listen to it and the Windows Media Player
program called it up (it has this fancy
feature that automatically lists the tracklist for
whatever CD you put in), and in an ironic
error, this actually listed the songs from the first
album. For some reason it skipped to track
4 (listed as The Sweater Song), and played "Island in
the Sun," which incidentally is easily the
worst song Weezer has ever done. Little shreds of
Rivers' ability to write a heartwrenching line,
and a good guitar part for that matter, peek through
now and then, but overall, the songs are all
distant, and seem to think "ROCKING" is better than
"being good."
"Crab," "Simple Pages," and "Don't Let Go" all offer
either classic Weezer changes or a good, fun
rock song (Yes! They did succeed occasionally!). But
none of the songs are good enough to
really stick out from the blinding sense that Weezer
are frantically kicking their distortion
and wearing their "hip dork" look in an attempt to
convince everyone (themselves included) that
they're the real Weezer, and they really are like
this.
I hope Weezer will use this album as a point to
restart from, and not the swan song to an unusually
enjoyable band.
|
