Raditude [CD]

I am always interested when I hear an album by an artist or
band who are totally unfamiliar to me. Weezer are one such.

That this is their seventh album means little to me at
the moment as I have heard nothing of the previous six.

Clearly the eleven songs which constitute this version
of the album have upset some of the bands fans and devotees.
(I have been a lover of the music of Joni Mitchell for four
decades and was hugely disappointed by her 1998 album
'Taming The Tiger'. I recovered however and so did she.
Her late Autumnal flowering 'Shine' was a complete joy!)
My point is that sometimes we have to cut some slack
for those who have worked hard to enrich our lives in
whatever small ways they are able.

Firstly, the album's front page photo is a hoot!
Mrs Wolf felt quite sure that she recognised the
flying dog as one of her second cousins six times
removed from a distantly (and tentatively) related
branch of her Californian forbears.
I am unable to confirm or deny this fanciful idea!

As for the music. Well, it's good American pop.
Rivers Cuomo writes some perfectly pleasant tunes
and sings them well. His fellow band members, in
particular the fine drummer they have in Patrick Wilson,
lend solid support to his (somewhat limited) vision
and seem, in general, to be having a nice time.

I particularly enjoyed 'Love Is The Answer'.
The attempt, with limited melodic and thematic ideas,
to re-create a little bit of East-meets-West-summer-of-67
West Coast-flowers-in-your-hair-optimism (sorry!)
is really rather charming (in a missed-it-by-a-mile
sort of way!)

'Let It All Hang Out' appears to be a narrative about
doing just this with one's "homies". If I am not
mistaken alcohol and young ladies may also be invoved.
Given that the band's first album appears to have been
released in 1994 I am impressed that they still seem
to possess the vigour to be able to fly the flag of
abandoned youth with such energy and conviction.

'The Girl Got Hot' is a cheeky little number which
wears its cliches lightly on its sleeve. A sort
of hyper-masculine version of Ms Perry's 'I Kissed A Girl',
except that in this case Mr Cuomo would not, of course,
be tongue-wrestling with a man because he very probably
(if fact almost certainly) wouldn't like it!
(...and as for Cherry Chapstick
...that would be just plain wrong!)

'I'm Your Daddy' made me chuckle once or twice too.

At the end of the day I did not feel let down by the project.
On the other hand Bloodhound Gang do the pseudo-collegiate
bad-boy schtick a whole lot better (and with an understanding
of the value of irony) but you pays your money and you
makes your choices.

I hope that those Weezer enthusiasts who felt let down
will be justly rewarded next time round but as a virgin in
Weezerworld I was happy to spend an hour in their company.

Recommended (erm sort-of).

As a huge Weezer fan, I've grown to accept that the band have moved away from the style that gave us "The Blue Album", "Pinkerton" and to an extent, "The Green Album" and "Maladroit". All four of those albums were incredible upon release and grow better and better with age. The new sound, as seen on the previous two albums and now pushed to extreme with "Raditude" is something I think Rivers Cuomo will need to re-examine, as it appears to have hit a brick wall now.

The rather misleading single, the excellent "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" starts the album off with a bang. It could very easily be the best Weezer song since "Dope Nose" or "Island in the Sun". But it is short lived, as every song after is an absolute turkey. Gone is that punky-pop-quirky-nerd-rock, replaced with dodgy pop with odd synthetic dance beats and hiphop segments randomly thrown about. Second song, "I'm Your Daddy" and the following song, "The Girl Got Hot" bring some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard, with Rivers Cuomo even seeming to lose his voice during parts of the latter.

Even more bemusing is the cameo of L'il Wayne on "Can't Stop Partying", an artist who will bring absolutely nothing of value to Weezer fans. One of the most cringe-worthy lines of his is "Okay bitches, Weezer and it's wheezy, upside down MTV, please don't shoot me down 'cos I'm an endangered species". If only he was. It just seems to me that the band have run out of ideas, and in order to make a stir, they've brought in another guy to look so bad as to try to disguise the terrible songwriting on this album.

The album doesn't get much better after that. "Put Me Back Together" at least tries to be something that Weezer fans can enjoy, but falls short of even some of the mediocre "Red Album" tracks. Perhaps even more insanely bizarre than the L'il Wayne cameo is the complete turnaround of the song "Love is the Answer," featuring an arrangement of traditional Indian instruments and singers. It's very difficult to describe, but sounds something like as if a snake charmer teamed up with a drummer and a kid who turns the distortion up on an electric guitar and hits it against a wall. It's such a low for Weezer that I can't see them retaining any significant proportion of their fans afterwards.

The album ends with a particularly whiney ballad called "I Don't Want To Let You Go", the title of which only lends to the melancholy of the old days by reminding us one of the band's older classics, "Don't Let Go". If you're unlucky enough to have picked up the version with bonus track "Turn Me Round" (another major low in the Weezer catalogue) or god-forbid you went for the Deluxe version and suffered through "Run Over By A Truck", then you'll know that not only is this a bad album, it has a chance of being cast into the burning fires of hell for being the worst album of all time. And it's a shame, because these are still the guys who brought us "My Name is Jonas" and "El Scorcho".

It's hurts me deeply to say that my recommendation is to buy the "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" single, avoid this album like the plague and try to see the finer points of "The Red Album" like "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" as Weezer's last decent effort before being swallowed up in a tundra of obscurity. To take another Weezer song title out of the air, "This is Such a Pity".

I was put off by the initial reviews here on Amazon but am so glad I ignored them and bought this CD. I have been a Weezer fan since first hearing Buddy Holly and would rate their Green Album among my all time favourites. Coming so soon after the Red album I was worried by the reviews and was prepared to be disappointed. Far from it, this is the strongest offering from Weezer for a while and I'm loving it. If you are a Weezer fan you won't have got this far without expecting something a bit more eclectic than most rock bands, so give it a go.