Weezer
The Red Album

Release Date: 2008 | Tracklist

For many pop fans, Weezer is the epitome of disappointing. After two amazing albums, many fans would be disappointed repeatedly with albums like Green Album and Make Believe, and some fans have just given up hyping Weezer albums all together. However, there is still a large amount of fans hyping the bands newest release The Red Album. It was named that as a supposed new era of Weezer (along with The Beginning era or The Blue Album and The Declining era or The Green Album). So will this album be the start of a new, improved, super-strength Weezer? The correct answer to that question is: sort of, but we will need more time to see.

With this album, we see Weezer desperately try to mix themselves up a little bit after the turd that was Make Believe by getting more members in the songwriting process, and with that we see some potential from the other members. "Thought I Knew", written by lead guitarist Brian Bell, is a very catchy, acoustic guitar led pop rock song. In the song, I actually like Brian Bell’s uplifting vocals far better than Rivers’ vocal, which is bland and annoying at this point in time. However, other non or half-Rivers songs don’t exactly succeed as well as "Thought I Knew". "Cold Dark World" suffers horribly from sounding over-long despite only being three minutes and fifty-one seconds long, and the fact that Bassist Scott Shriner’s doesn't sing, he just in an almost angry voice that just doesn't fit the song at all . "Automatic" is decent guitar-led song, but would be better if it weren’t so overproduced, and if the electronic effects weren’t so glaringly annoying. The songs that are written by other members show potential for more in the future, but in reality the are nothing more than catchy pop songs, just like the ones Rivers writes.

Rivers Cuomo is in fact, one of the worst parts of the album. His songwriting is, to be nice, extremely basic. No band member gets to add anything spectacular to the album, and nothing ever happens where you say “wow, this is brilliant”. The closest thing to anything musically brilliant that is the absolutely hilarious "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)", which makes fun of several different types of mainstream music, which makes for an enjoyable, excellent song, but is still rather basic, and doesn‘t go outside the box in creativity. "Pork & Beans" is far from brilliant, but it is a catchy single, and contains some funny lyrics like “Everyone likes to dance to a happy song/with a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along/Timbaland knows the way to reach the top of the charts/maybe if i work with him I can perfect the art”. Since the song is about being a rebel, it will appeal with many of Weezer’s younger fans. Other than about two songs, however, Rivers’ songs are abysmal to say the least. "Heart Songs" is quite bland and cheesy, dealing with Rivers’ “heart songs”, or the songs that were influential to his musical growth. "Everybody Get Dangerous" is a ignorant party song that will probably be successful as a single, but overall contains no real material, and Rivers’ bland vocal and annoying delivery disrupt any flow the song had going. With The Red Album it seems the band would be better off if Rivers wrote less of the songs, as he seems to be more miss than hit in song writing.

So after all the whines and fusses, Weezer’s new effort shows potential for a possible revival in quality in the future. But this album just shows glimpses of that, as most of it is just as bland and uninspired as albums like The Green Album or Make Believe. The other members of the band actually seem more likely to write better songs than Rivers does, especially Brian Bell. The band’s songwriting could defiantly incorporate more of the band members talent, maybe making it a little more complicated. Weezer do really try to revive themselves on this album, but ultimately, it is only slightly better than past, disappointing releases.

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2.7 average

Rank: #0 for 2008