Weezer - (Red Album)

Weezer is one of those slow-and-steady consistent bands where it is never just about a single song, but an entire record, and the 2^nd self titled album Weezer, or the Red Album, is no exception.  The bad reviews & odd popular conception (a low seller in America, but a #1 hit in Japan -again) has to due with the striking post-modernist views expressed both musically and lyrically.  This album was what the band needed perhaps more then what the fans, or shall we say the pop-fans, wanted.  This album, however, is brilliant.

                Something Weezer has always been about is a dedication and reverence for the past.  Even if they don’t mention it, the evidence in older albums was an obvious cornucopia of style with as many surf songs and rock-pop hits as heavier driving classic rock & simple folk.  Now that fusion is somewhat sarcastic.  Whereas before, with songs like “Buddy Holly” everyone was laughing along, now, the sarcastic humor is somewhat spiteful & over our heads, with a new world understanding of just how serious their own message was & now has become, Weezer is having some philosophical fun with us.  The beginning of The Red Album does not knock on your door politely to come in and have a cup of tea; instead it pounds down the door and demands to be heard without any pleasantries.  If you don’t already know Weezer, I wouldn’t recommend starting with this album, as the previous work is required listening to understand just what they’re getting at.

                This album is for the true Weezer fan.  You get to hear vocals from the entire band (all well done and in tune, a rarity in this industry).  You get experimental music that we’re not used to as the band goes back to a pre-Blue Album time when Cuomo and the guys were delegating just who did what.  Now we get pleasant, if near Indy music, performances of a new holistic Weezer.  When listening, one is easily thrown back to other great bands that did this (for trial, success or error).  The Red Album is most easily comparable to R.E.M.’s Eponymous, with multiple fun band member cameos, strange new instruments, techniques and effects, and a wonderful sense of power that the band truly can do whatever they want to creatively.  Not to mention, a little of the shocking realness we now respect Bruce Springsteen for with biting samples of harsh reality.  Some complain about the new changes, but it seems like without them, the band may not have even survived.  Theoretically, wecould have a sort of upcoming “Out of Time” era and a possible “Losing my Religion” type path for Weezer’s future, where they take this new post-modernity and translate it into pop-rock understanding for the masses.  The Red Album seems like a prologue for greater albums to come, yet a vital reference point none the less.

                The songs on The Red Album range from a taste of their familiar roots to wild new ideas all with a tinge irony. “Dreamin,’” and “Miss Sweeny” (as well as most of the songs Rivers Cuomo sings on) still have the same old familiarity.  The songs’ style and rhythm all sound like they could have been somehow taken right off the oldies station, and then twist into power rock choruses that sample yet transcend those old standards.  As with older albums, not enough can be said about the harmonies of the singing & guitar.  The secret weapon of Weezer is an entire band that can sing, and they truly allow Cuomo to fly into beautiful cadence.  Matt Sharp’s Bass is always the in perfect syncopation with Jason Cropper’s guitar as if joined by sort of mystical musical hip.  They can take a simple melody and turn it into something that sticks humming in the brain for years to come.  Glue all this together with Patrick Wilson’s driving rock beats & incredible sense of dynamics on the drums and you get an incredible album.  Much respect should be paid to a band where all the members can play instruments and sing.  In this day of digital sampling and vocoder auto-tuning, bands that work as hard as Weezer deserve respect & your ears

 

Like every Weezer album, we forget that they are individuals & slip away into the world they fashioned; we go to that place of imagination that is Weezer’s metaphorical Island in the Sun…but the isle now has a mysterious jungle, intrepid and overgrown.  Songs such as “Automatic” feel a bit crazed, yet poignant, whereas “King” does so much as to transmute one into the shoes of a megalomaniac.  Parts on the album where more seasoned critics get paranoid and upset are typically not because they are bad songs, but because they are songs with personal messages that, for many such self important people, hit too close to home.  But when one spends more time with the album and especially the songs featuring the rest of the band on lead vocals, the surprise is pleasant.  One is even able to hear a bit of a Bob Dylan like twang, rhyme and writing style in “The Weight.” These are clearly not pop songs.  This clearly is not a pop album.  So why is every critic worth their salt acting as if it is and that Weezer owes something to pop?  Hard lessons, though tough to listen to, are still valuable, if not more so.  The true value of theRed Album is not retained in the first listening, perhaps not even 10 or 100 times is enough to understand just how important the individual perspectives of the band members really are.  This album deserves critical analysis more like what Radiohead’s “OK Computer” received.  It’s a revolution for Weezer more then a mere album!

The parts of the Red Album that deserve the most attention are the rough, unfamiliar parts, as they most likely show a new side of the band for the future.  This album is more for those who enjoy Weezer’s earlier B-side work, for those who like the whole album and not just the singles.  It may be shocking to the typical fair of Weezer fans, but it is easy to tell that this is what the band wanted.  Cuomo’s earlier Rolling Stone interviews, during the “Green Album” release, speak of a sort of disassociation from the crowds, of him going to see Dave Mathews and being “disappointed” that there weren’t enough drugs being used by the audience.  This sort of dissention of wanting to be a more alternative artist and being mainstream is something the band is now in the process of deconstructing and rebuilding the way they want it.  It seems the goal here is not fame; they have that, they now seem to want an ability to regulate their audience somewhat, thin out the ignorant fans, and bring in a more esoteric & philosophically oriented mindset of concert goers.

Weezer’s Red Album deserves your time and energy & will return the favor with incite into new music to come & a refreshing perspective on pop-society.  The individual creativity of band members trying things they haven’t before is brave, even audacious considering their already thriving fan base. To risk that popularity in the name of art is one of the more inspiring things a band can do today in a music culture of production value and “it” factor.  Despite heavy critical complaints, the Red Album symbolizes a new style for Weezer that is a more solid, well-rounded version of itself, even if it takes a few years and a couple more albums for us to catch on.

Weezer - (Red Album)

2008 Geffen

Rick Rubin, Jacknife Lee, Weezer