And I will admit to having a very ambivalent relationship with this band. After all, you would think I would like Mr. Rivers Cuomo given his geeky nature and his tendency to champion all things nerdy and strange. This is the band that once went on The Tonight Show to show off their snuggies.
And yet, they're very hit and miss. Their recent propensity for putting out a new album every time Cuomo sneezes is a part of that--after a break of three years between Make Believe and 'The Red Album,' they've put out four albums in three years, plus two albums worth of Cuomo's demos. But I think their uneveness started long before their recent run. They're like the infamous girl with the curl--when they're good, they're great ("Only In Dreams," "Undone," "Hash Pipe," "Buddy Holly," "Beverly Hills," the most recent single "Memories"), and when they're bad--or even average--they're kind of annoying. And because they've become so prolific I've given up on buying their albums...it's a whole lot easier putting up with their dross when I only had to deal with four, five songs out of fifteen every two or three years. When you're dealing with ten, twenty songs every year...well, it's time to walk away.
And I'd put this in the 'kind of annoying' category, a relatively unimaginative riff on The Talking Heads' "Psychokiller," with the POV character becoming more and more agitated by the tenseness of his life. However, the conventional guitar riff does not reflect the lyrics as efficiently as David Bryne's, and Cuomo...well, he comes off as a whiny lil' bastard (which, to be fair, is how he comes off in about 20% of Weezer's songs--although in some of them, like "Beverly Hills," he's a charming and witty whiny bastard). Yeah, he boasts about how he 'punched the devil in the eye'--but do we really believe him? The answer, sadly, is no.
No video. I found a minute long snippet from a live performance I could post...but I don't want to.
Next?
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