Blog 82: We Are All On Blogs

WARNING!

Stop whatever you're doing and DON'T go buy the new Weezer album "Make Believe"!
Do whatever it takes to NOT buy this album!
Seriously! It's bad!


Thanks. Having said that if you're not a dyed in the wool Weezer fan go ahead an buy it. You might like it.

We as fans of the almighty =W= have waited patiently through official website blackouts, missing members, side projects, rumors, hints, hundreds of scrapped songs, format changes, producers coming and going and pic after pic of 4 glorious nerds rocking out in a studio lobby on sticker covered acoustic guitars. And all we got was this lousy album.
Weezer's 5th work (their third since their "glorious reappearing in 2001") is a record of catchy, sing-a-long pop tunes over crunchy hair metal influenced guitar work. Nerdy, introspective, self deprecating and honest; a true emo kid's party album. Sounds like they make good on the fan's hopes of a return to the geekdom and masochism of Pinkerton and Blue, right? But there's one glaring problem: it's all the things I mentioned and more, but it's not Weezer. I mean, it IS Weezer, but it's not, you know? Let me explain. Every song on "Make Believe" is a song you feel like you've heard before. A lot. The melodies are familiar and almost border on plagiarism at times. The song structures are pure textbook, the perfectly packaged guitar solos are contrived and lack spontaneity and feeling and the lyrical content makes nursery rhymes look like abstract Japanese poetry. I don't exactly know what Cuomo and crew were trying to say with this new work but it doesn't seem like anything at all. Each song takes a page from the grand soup of pop music with tired cliches and predictable rhymes leaving the listener to wonder if Rivers simply cracked open a Rhyming Dictionary and copied en masse.
While I won't tear the album a new one like Pitchfork did, or glorify it blindly like Artist Direct did, I will say that as a fan, it's not at all what I was hoping and praying for after nearly 3 years of waiting. But as an album, taken alone without the baggage of the now immortalized first two albums, it is catchy, it is poppy, it is worthy of a few head nods. What it all comes down to is that if this were Weezer's first album it would probably be received better all around. It's pop radio fodder and it's got all the makings of a gold record. It's by the books in every way. But the appeal of Weezer's first two records is that they weren't trying to make it big, they were trying to write catchy rock songs about KISS and girls and being shy and nerdy. Since then it's as if Weezer had been abducted by aliens and replaced by pre-programmed androids that were only given one book on how to make it as a pop sensation and left to win over the teenage girls.

Final thoughts: It's a proper album, it has infectious songs, it has singles and stand out tracks and you can listen to it without screaming or crying, but if you ever tied a piece of your heart to a Weezer song before 1996 you just might want to.

The Meat 'n' Taters:
Good Tracks:
Hold Me, Freak Me Out, This is Such a Pity (kinda)

Bad Bad Tracks:
We Are All On Drugs, Perfect Situation, Pardon Me

Everything else is just forgettable or weak. Especially the single "Beverly Hills"