It’s not that I’m a sunny-eyed optimist (as anyone who has perused my reviews will attest), but I do occasionally feel pangs of curiosity that overshadow prejudiced predictions (as anyone who did a double take over the appearance of Chris Cornell’s latest in the review section will attest). I was warned in advance: Weezer’s decline became the stuff of legend as the aughts weaned on, and their new one is titled Raditude. Joking about how awful the name is would be too easy; it would also be wrong since, for this collection of power pop nuggets, I can’t think of anything more appropriate (even more than Look Elsewhere or Not Your Older Sibling’s Weezer). The reasoning is simple: "raditude" sounds like a clueless slang buzzword passed between teenagers of a certain easily-cowed mentality (both the extro and introverts), and the songs of Raditude are clearly aimed at them. Anyone who came of age as a teen in the mid-90s with the first two Weezer records are way beyond this flat fluff, or so I can only hope.
But I’m beyond the complaint that this isn’t the same Weezer I fell in love with back in the 90s. No, really, I swear. Now I’m stuck on the complaint that it’s just not very satisfying. For the most part, the scheming to reclaim the world of power pop has been left in the dust; instead of trying to shift high calorie, low nutrition units on an easily diverted populace like they did with Make Believe, Rivers Cuomo and company are back to their usual tricks of adolescent angst packaged in breezy, fuzz-crunch pop melodies given a slick overhaul. Is Rivers too old for this kind of shallow sentiment? Not at all; it may look strange to see someone nearing forty spout soulless snark and sappiness, but he doesn’t sound too grizzled or haggard for it (nor too mature, which might be part of the problem). Raditude isn’t nearly as offensive or self-destructive as its detractors envisaged (or wished), but in a weird way, isn’t it more fun to see a car tumble off a cliff than putter noisily for a few seconds before stalling on the side of the road?
Oh, there are disasters in store for the listener, but not enough to declare this record to be a complete trainwreck. Expectedly, the two that deliver unforgivable cringes are the ones that should have been sniffed out when they were still on paper—bad choices to tweak the growing-listless formula. “Can’t Stop Partying” is the worst offender, a collaboration with Lil’ Wayne and Jermaine Dupri that’s overloaded with chintzy synth swipes and garish words that may very well sink lower than the previous verbal nadirs of singles “Beverly Hills” and “Pork and Beans”—“I got the real big posse with me, yeah, I'm deep/And if you lookin' for me I'm in V.I.P.” Not far behind is “Love Is the Answer,” which reads like Hallmark aping Brian Wilson and plays out with Indian harmonies and sitars so ineffectually integrated that you hardly even notice how inane the words are.
Missing the lyrical inanity might be Weezer’s best weapon as of now. None of Cuomo’s pubescent prattle will appeal to anyone but the least discriminating fourteen-year-olds out there, but I confess that I did find myself tapping my toes involuntarily on a couple of occasions. My first pass through “I’m Your Daddy” didn’t elicit the jeers I expected from the song name because none of the words sunk in; generic as the arrangement is, the standard pounding beat and revving guitar riffs do work on the gut level. A fair warning: revisits will inevitably make you hear Miley Cyrus-esque monstrosities like, “I thought tonight would suck like every other night/I'd party with my friends/But when I saw you grooving on the dance floor/Normal came to an end.” “In the Mall”’s gritty riffs and bass-heavy rhythm seems at surface glance to be a somewhat darker and harsher effort from the group (it’s not), and the chorus hook is effective. But its bridge is this: “Take the elevator/To the escalator/Ride it down and start again.” Is Cuomo speaking to mallrats now or easily amused four-year-olds?
The successes beyond a few returns to the well of polished pop rock crescendos and thumping beats are mild and fleeting at best. The best example: “I Don’t Want to Let You Go” is heavily indebted to cursory rewrites of the Beach Boys, but as simple and sloppy as the message might be, the harmonies are winsome and arrangement is shiny in the right ways for that type of sighing pop melody. As expected, you don’t rank it much higher than guilty pleasure, though, because the superficiality cannot be refuted. That superficiality arises from context. You could believe that a band in the same vein could be completely straightfaced about this material (say, All American Rejects), but since you know that Cuomo is capable of plumbing both the outside world and his inner turmoil with effective humor and pathos (and even the right kind of creepiness), you therefore know that he and the band are capable of making honest pop music. So this regression is difficult to swallow as devolving chicanery—is he being unendearingly sarcastic, hawking junk he knows will sell, or (as some have suggested) created a sketchy concept album of adolescent gripes and strife intentionally without a whiff of wit? I can believe that easier than witnessing a band’s regression into rot, but that doesn’t make it worthwhile.
About on par with their last LP, Weezer [The Red Album], and a step or two up from Make Believe, Raditude isn’t the shameless embarrassment that some have declared, but there’s no defending this album without resorting to the same sort of reasoning that people use to defend vapid rom-coms and Michael Bay atrocities—turn your brain off and have a good time. I don’t have that function to disengage my grey matter, but I can sometimes coast through pop music without letting a single syllable linger. In that mentality, this is a mediocre album and harmless enough to be forgiven. But if you let it sink in just a few inches deeper, you’re left with the same grumpy, unreasonable complaint: why can’t they make another Pinkerton?
