Review Summary: Weezer perfectly blend the mixture of pop punk and electronica. Killers, take notice.
I have been a little harsh regarding electronic music involving synths such as The Killers' first debut, Hot Fuss, as well as Radiohead's fan favorite Kid A. That's not to say that rock music and synths can't go together though, they just need the right mixture, and quite frankly, Weezer has the formula down perfectly. After the success of Green Album a few years back, what was Rivers to do? They couldn't get any more anthem-filled or they would fall by the wayside like Green Day and their newest release. So they decided to take a new direction entirely and it couldn't have worked better. Combining some old school punk like their Pinkerton with an until now unexplored keyboard, Weezer hit a home run.
The concept of Make Believe revolves dreams. Its a great concept and it really makes the music videos a lot of fun to watch. But as for the actual music, it's even better. Lead vocalist Rivers Cuomo writes about his normal themes of love, loss and being a punk, and he's full of energy just like their predeceasing outputs. However where the band has changed the most is in the instrumental department. While some of the songs still have that old fashioned pop punk rock goodness to them, the newest inclusion here is the inclusion of keyboards. They are almost always well implemented and usually don't become the main focus of the song. Although if I did have a complaint its that they're a bit too prevalent in a couple of the early tracks.
The album is split into two halves after the funky intro Beverly Hills which is actually the worst song. The first half of the album is full of electronic dance-pop like This Is Such a Pity and We Are All on Drugs while the second half has more traditional Weezer like Pardon Me, Freak You Out, and The Other Way. Then the album ends with a very standard but very old-school pop song called Haunt You Every Day. Personally I do like the second half better although the main reason for that is that the first half contains most of the singles that have been drilled into my head already. Overall its a great album though and probably the best possible direction the band could have gone after Maladroit.
