Review Summary: (If you're wondering if this album's bad) This album's bad.
Somewhere in-between a college degree, the Muppets, a California hotspot, a 0.5 Pitchfork review and some song about being on drugs that wasn’t called "Hash Pipe", Weezer became a dirty word. Labelling yourself a Weezer fan was altered to the point where one had to specify being exclusive fans of the “blue” album and the seminal
Pinkerton in order to keep “cool”. Nobody, it seemed, wanted anything to do with the band any more.
It’s been interesting, then, to see the band themselves try and change that in the past two years. They got off to a pretty good start, too – the “red” album’s lead single, "Pork & Beans", aside from being one of their strongest ever singles, also spawned a brilliant music video that is one of the most-watched of all time on YouTube. The album itself was also a major improvement over its predecessor, 2005’s mostly-woeful
Make Believe.
Unfortunately, it seems like the band got over-excited about their reclaiming of their credibility and tried to speed the process along a little quicker. The end result of that is
Raditude, which lands in our optimistic ears just over a year after the “red” album dropped. What a shame that the album brings the band back to doing what it’s been doing best this decade: disappoint. Despite a strong start,
Raditude quickly falls head over heels – not in love, mind, but in pure clumsiness.
The main problem with the album’s close proximity to the “red” album is just how much of an album of leftovers
Raditude" sounds like, rather than an entirely new record in itself. The fact that Rivers Cuomo has thrown together some of his weakest moments as a writer yet really don’t help the case much further. "Let It All Hang Out" is a pigeon-toed attempt at sounding like a rock star and the woeful "Love is the Answer" wouldn’t be out of place as the soundtrack to a Tony Robbins self-help tape.
"Can’t Stop Partying" is…well…just what do you say about this kind of song? There’s a thudding club beat, forced back studio guitar from Brian Bell and Lil Wayne makes a cameo, mumbling something about “Weezer and Weezy” and sounding like he has just come out of a weed-induced coma. At the centre of the entire cluster-f
uck is Rivers himself, who honestly sounds like he’s taken the lyrics of a generic top 40 dance-pop hit and attempted to cover them in a quasi-ironic fashion. It’s trying to be funny, you just know it; but you’re either going to end up either purely stone-faced or ready to punch somebody’s lights out.
It’s because of these glaring faults that "(If You’re Wondering if I Want You To) I Want You To" is such a deceptive opener. The 2/4 stomp throws in some charming acoustic twang with Pat Wilson’s driving percussion, before the entire thing is bowled over by one of the year’s catchiest choruses. Sure, Cuomo singing about being a teen in awkward love with a girl is kinda creepy; but when you’re onto a pop song of this quality, you could be singing about most anything, really.
As a matter of fact, the best moments on the album seem to only come from compromise on the listener. For instance, if you ignore the moronic lyrics of "The Girl Got Hot", it’s a fun rock shuffle with a pro turn from the drummer’s drummer Josh Freese. If you can see past the fact it sounds like a “green” album b-side, "Put Me Back Together" is a lovely power-pop track. Having said that, this kind of overlooking shouldn’t have to happen in order to improve the album overall.
Raditude is too much, too soon from a band struggling to stay interesting. Fans should most probably turn and walk away for good, as things could probably get worse on 2010’s yellow album (it could happen!). It looks inevitable that critics will only be having one kind of debate over this album – and that’s whether the flying couch dog is responsible for either the best or worst album cover of 2009.
