Say it Ain't So: Weezer continues suckitude

Listening to the new Weezer album Raditude will make you stop and ponder if what you believe to be true is really true. By the time track 4, "Can't Stop Partying," pummels your ears, you wonder. "Was this band ever good?" It's hard to believe, but yes, Weezer was a great band... one of the best.

Liner Notes has always believed Weezer's first two albums to be very good. The band's second, Pinkerton, is pretty close to being a masterpiece -- a sharp, thematically cohesive album with heartbreakingly terrific songs. There are world weary laments like "Tired of Sex" and "The Good Life" and of love unrequited "Across the Sea" and "Pink Triangles." Each is the work of a desperate man looking for what he cannot have -- the stuff of compelling song.

Weezer developed its early reputation on smart and heavy guitar pop and lyrics that really got the now-famous angst of '90s kids. And the band's front man and principal songwriter, the appropriately bespectacled Rivers Cuomo, was a perfect hero of the ne'er-do-well -- a man millions muddling through life could relate to. It was a band that first hit the mainstream with a song about a relationship unraveling like a sweater, leaving its protagonist, naked, "Lying on the floor. I've come undone."

The band that made those first albums is still as talented on Raditude, but with Pinkeron 12 years and fading in the past, the angst of the band members, and clearly of Cuomo, is long gone. This is the band that in 2005 released the wretched album Make Believe (produced by Rick Rubin!) and a single called "Beverly Hills (That's Where I want to Be)," a song so devoid of substance and artistry, it could have been better performed by a kazoo quartet.

No, the new Weezer is a content, and happy arena rock band. Gone is the band that delivered the debut album's "Say it Ain't So," which is perhaps the bands best song to date. Gone is the irony, the angst, the desperation, fear, beauty and bizarre humor that defined Weezer's wonderful roots. The new Weezer is mainstream and enjoying it. Gone is Cuomo as Buddy Holly. He's now as interesting as Rick Springfield.

Take these songs with titles that tell you all there is to know about their themes: "The Girl Got Hot," "Can't Stop Partying," "In the Mall" and "Let it all Hang Out" (in which he actually sings the lyrics: "going out with my homies.") There's nothing to analyze. It's quite clear that the band that meant so much to the nerds of the nineties is now nothing more than a jock rock soundtrack special.

If there is a bright side, it is this: Raditude is probably better than average when compared to the great swath of middling mainstream rock targeted to tweens. Cuomo might have lost his mojo for writing songs that matter, but he's a great pop song craftsman (that Harvard music degree has to account for something, right?). The band still rocks and does so as well or better than any band you'll hear in heavy rotation on a CW show. The stage is there in the sharp, loud sound, but the actors are long gone.

Perhaps, Cuomo knows all of this. Liner Notes believes he does. He's too smart not to know that his new songs have none of the edge of his earlier work. The old Cuomo may be long gone -- clearly the man is too successful to fret about his self worth and agonize over failed relationships -- but the Cuomo singing about pre-teen concerns and frat boy revelations is more disingenuous than if he had simply tried to re-imagine the past.

Liner Notes is not sure why we continue to believe there's a chance the band would return to form. There have been whiffs of it -- there are some good moments on their fourth album, Maladroit. But with each release since Make Believe those hopes have sunk. Raditude will probably be a favorite of teens growing up right now. It's got great hooks and the concerns are teen concerns. But for those of us who know what Cuomo and crew are (were) really capable of, this one hurts (again).