WEEZER 'Weezer' (Geffen/Interscope)
Rivers Cuomo is cool precisely because he goes so far out of his way not to be cool. He is the perpetual adolescent trapped in a 38-year-old man's body, complete with a cowboy hat and a mustache worthy of a '70s porn star.
But beneath the anti-star facade is one of the most calculating songwriters of the last decade. Even midlife crisis is fodder for catchy guitar anthems designed to make legions of 15-year-olds spaz out in Rivers worship.
Weezer has released six albums in 14 years. Three of them, including the California quartet's latest, are simply titled "Weezer" (the new one is being called "The Red Album," because of its red color scheme and to distinguish it from the self-titled 1994 "Blue Album" and self-titled 2001 "Green Album"). All offer variations on a couple of themes: not fitting in and the liberating power of rocking out.
Cuomo once used to write power-pop songs from a wrenchingly personal perspective, the teenage recluse in love with '80s metal and in conflict with just about everything else: girls, school, parents, his hair, himself. But lately the songs have expanded to arena-size proportions, and self-deprecating humor has crept into the lyrics. It's only fitting because Cuomo is now married and has a child. He's a Harvard graduate who has sold millions of albums. We shouldn't expect him to act like a troubled teenager anymore.
But on "Weezer" Mach III, Cuomo doesn't want to grow up. The protagonist on "Troublemaker" is still stuck in high school, where detention beckons: "Who needs stupid books?/They are for petty crooks." His sole ambition is to become a rock star so that he can "do things my own way."
"Heart Songs" rewrites "In the Garage" from the band's 1994 debut. After name-checking artists who shaped his world as a radio listener in the '70s and '80s (Quiet Riot! Devo! Eddie Rabbit!), Cuomo returns to the moment he picked up a guitar, formed a band and heard his song on the radio for the first time. "Everybody Get Dangerous" celebrates juvenile pranks (Blowing up mailboxes! Toilet-papering houses!) and "Dreamin' " proclaims "I don't want to get with the program," no matter what his parents and teachers say.
What else to call this except pandering? As a lyricist, Cuomo should know better, but he's now clearly more interested in market share than in writing from the heart, as he did on "Pinkerton" in 1996. He compensates by delivering plenty of facile thrills: big riffs and shout-along choruses ("Troublemaker"), bombastic progressive rock ("The Greatest Man That Ever Lived"), and a little of both ("Dreamin').
Tune out the lyrics and you've got a big, first-rate arena-rock album.
When Cuomo turns over the songwriting and singing to his bandmates on the second half of "Weezer," even the riffs can't save the songs from sounding like mid-'90s alternative-rock retreads.
Order is restored on the closing "The Angel and the One," which allows Cuomo to play rock star one more time. Over a slow-build, lighter-waving arrangement, he ascends to "a higher place that no one else can make a claim in." A place, presumably, where middle-age guys can rock like they're 16 forever.
-- Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune
First Published: June 5, 2008, 4:00 a.m.
