Weezer

Weezer’s Red Album is a circle completed. The neo-teenybopper bands that modelled themselves after Blue Album-era Weezer before developing their own irritating styles have finally influenced Rivers himself. Red Album Weezer is indistinguishable from any run-of-the-mill radio act. The record is a siren song for the barely legal girls that Cuomo is so fond of — unsurprising, as there seems to be no other reason for the 38-year-old Harvard graduate to hold on to his music career. The record is calculated to turn on MySpace kiddies; the music is a mishmash of bad genres, from sucky, pseudo-sensitive folk to macho nu-alternative. When Cuomo isn’t breaking into rap-ish monologues, he’s making predictable, cringe-worthy references to things like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or making awful attempts at one-liners ("everybody get dangerous, everybody get dangerous, ooh yeah”). The good Weezer, which, let’s admit, lasted for all of one record, returns for a bridge or two but the band are clearly too lazy not to cop songs from their mediocre acolytes. Admittedly, ripping apart the new Weezer record is a little unnecessary. But Cuomo seems to anticipate critical aversion — a recurring "fuck the world” theme is suspicious, if not obnoxious, and shows that the one-time nerd icon is perfectly content to rest on the laurels of his past achievement(s?). Simply put, Weezer seem to have little interest in releasing a halfway decent record. So why bother?