Weezer
Raditude
(Universal)
This is my first reaction to Weezer’s 7th album
Raditude:
@ikrogers: Rivers Cuomo is the Terminator of contemporary pop music. And I'm in Microsoft Word working out so I can become his Sarah Conner?
Why the Terminator metaphor? A day previous, I read of Joss Whedon’s request to purchase the franchise for $10,000 (read it
here), so maybe that had something to do with it? Or maybe it was my subconscious telling me something, joining dots, charting patterns. After all, over the last few years Rivers Cuomo has become an entirely hypothetical person; an eccentric but past it genius to some (not me), a robotic killing machine to others (me). According to Pitchfork, he’s already sent himself back to try and destroy the past (read that
here). I tend to agree with the sentiment but it’s not the past to which he does most harm, it’s the present.
Raditude is a unerringly terrible piece of crap, so bad that I can’t think straight when I listen to it, let alone ponder its relation to
Pinkerton.
Like all good horror narratives, things start out well enough. Opener ‘(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To’ is a tightly written, if typical piece of Weezer: a pop song, a chorus, a teenage romance, pop-culture references and a hint of nostalgic do-whop. It is absolutely the highlight of
Raditude, everything after is substandard, sometimes immeasurably so. ‘I’m Your Daddy’ is commercial plop, all digitised drums, auto-tune and Avril power-choruses, ‘The Girl Got Hot’ is as insipidly jocular as it sounds and I will not even speak of ‘Love Is The Answer’ (I won’t Ed!). With the help of Lil Wayne, ‘Can’t Stop Partying’ may bounce along and parody the glitz of modern hip-hop but it’s also every bit as dull. Unfortunately this track is emblematic of the whole. The majority of
Raditude could similarly be viewed as parody but it likewise fails to entertain or provoke. Would you like to listen to a band cataloguing the tics and failings of mainstream American radio without transcending them? Because that’s all Weezer do here.
While I’m loath to take this at anything but face value, Rivers does have a history of methodical, quasi-conceptual song-writing and the resulting band have always enjoyed being a little contrary. It makes sense to me that a completely and crassly modern pop record - i.e. something deliberately mashed up out of the aesthetics of naughties emo, jock-metal and hip hop - would look like a good idea on paper to Rivers. It would be, at the very least, a suitable strategy with which to divert attention from a swag of lesser songs. Yet it remains a very garish and ugly sounding record and at its worst a very, very cynical exercise indeed. Cuomo would be wise to remember that even in this post-Britney age, the true – nay only - measure of a contemporary artist is the dialogue he or she maintains with the audience. It’s a conversation. And to take up that metaphor (the Terminator one had a short life didn’t it?), in this conversation Rivers is talking to me but keeps eyeing my little sister. And my wallet. And he’s making me wonder why I ever invited him to the party. Whatever he said a few albums ago is long forgotten....I want to pour my beer on him.
Ian Rogers