SOUNDTRACK: WEEZER-Raditude (2009).
I didn’t buy this Weezer album when it came out because I had heard really bad things about it (like the “guests”), but when I saw it cheap I decided to check it out. This has to be the most polarizing Weezer album of them all. I listened to it twice yesterday. The first time I thought I had been too harsh on it. The second time I thought it was godawful. It’s amazing what a couple of hours can do.
It opens with a wonderful bit of poppy wordplay ala Cheap Trick: “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To.” It’s catchy as anything and is a wonderful start to the album, even if it is probably their poppiest song ever. From there though, the album really degenerates. And mostly it’s because it’s so dumb. I mean the album title should tell you what you’re in for, but who would have expected the moronic sub-pop-metal of “The Girl Got Hot” or even the reprehensible lyrics of “I’m Your Daddy” “You are my baby tonight And I’m your daddy.” It’s just creepy. Or gah, a song about the mall? “In the Mall.” It’s not even worth mocking. And really, try to picture Rivers Cuomo in a mall. Any mall.
But nothing could prepare anyone for “Can’t Stop Partying.” Unlike Andrew WK’s ouvre, which is so sincere about partying that you can’t take it seriously, this song really seems to be about the guys partying. It’s laughable. The anemic rap but Li’l Wayne certainly doesn’t help.
Even the collaboration with Indian musicians on “Love is the Answer” (yes, seriously) doesn’t really work. It feels like they wrote the song and then said, “Hey let’s throw some sitar on it.” It’s not enough to be exciting but too much to ignore.
This is not to say that these songs aren’t catchy. I mean, geez, I still have “Can’t Stop Partying” in my head while I’m listening to something else. Rivers knows how to write a pop trifle. And the more he writes songs like this, it makes me thing that Pinkerton was the fluke. Which is fine. The music world needs poppy songs, right?
[READ: early August 2011] various nonfictions
I thought about doing individual posts for all of Arthur Bradford’s non-fiction that’s available on his website (that’s right, yet another author that I have read short uncollected pieces by without having read any of his bigger works–I’m looking at you Wells Tower). Bradford has links to all of his nonfiction ( I assume) on his website. There are 12 links in total. One is to his blog (which I’m not reviewing). The rest are for articles covering a pretty broad array of topics from a pretty broad variety of sources. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 