Weezer - Raditude
by Liz Perry 03/05/2010
4.0 of 5 stars
Say what you will about Weezer -- in their nearly 18 years of existence, they've
never recorded the same album twice. And yet, your mind's already made up about
them. You either love them or hate them. They're either catharsis or pox.
Perhaps you've pre-ordered Raditude; maybe you're avoiding it as if 't'were the
plague. A review isn't going to do much in the line of changing that. Still,
it's my duty to let you know that Raditude is a veritable oasis in a desert of
recent lousy-to-middling Weezer offerings.
It's reasonable to have low hopes for the alt-rock quartet's seventh (and
contractually final, pending renegotiation) LP. Make Believe drowned in a
one-note ocean of its own treacle and The Red Album was more or less a failed
experiment in bombast and giving Brian Bell his own song. Rest assured that
Raditude is better than both of them and even manages to supersede The Green
Album and Maladroit in variety and novelty. It's more than you'd hoped it would
be.
Weezer has again eschewed self-production and their usual go-to producer Ric
Ocasek in favor of enlisting the talents of a stable of unlikely bedfellows.
Butch Walker, Dr. Luke, Jermaine Dupri, Jacknife Lee, and Tyson Ritter and Nick
Wheeler of the All-American Rejects have all left their fingerprints on Raditude.
The record is better for it, spending 33 minutes bouncing from style to style
without rehashing Red's schizophrenia.
You've got '50s malt-shop pop with lead single "(If You're Wondering If I Want
You To) I Want You To." "Put Me Back Together," "Trippin' Down the Freeway," and
"Let It All Hang Out" serve as throwbacks to the early-era Weezer rock you know
and trust. And if you're interested in the results of Weezer's risky forays into
dance-pop, "I'm Your Daddy" and "Can't Stop Partying" are catchy enough to make
believers out of cynics. The latter of the two features a totally unexpected rap
interlude by Lil Wayne, who's got enough cache to get away with dropping the
first F-bomb on a Weezer album.
Raditude's lowest point is "Love Is the Answer," a sitar-studded failure of a
ballad that sounds like a 2005 Weezer song that, incredibly, wasn't good enough
for Make Believe. "In the Mall," a writing contribution from drummer (and, now,
sometimes-guitarist and non-good songwriter) Patrick Wilson fares little better,
often contenting itself with repeating its title over and over on top of a
tuneless guitar riff. Album closer "I Don't Want to Let You Go" is harmless but
could never be considered a worthy successor to "Only in Dreams" and "The Angel
and the One."
Last year, I recommended Weezer fans pick up the Deluxe Edition of The Red
Album, which came with a quartet of five-star songs that were, in many respects,
better than any of the record's 10-song core. I cannot make that recommendation
this year. The Deluxe Edition of Raditude offers the same sort of bonus, except
that three of the songs are crap. "The Underdogs," co-written with Kazuhiro
Hara, is the excellent odd-one-out, and may be enough justification for the
Weezer completist to drop the extra scratch.
Fans of Cuomo & Co. could do a lot worse than to pick up Raditude. It's light,
fun, and not as deliberately ridiculous as its predecessor. If you're looking
for a return to The Blue Album or Pinkerton, however -- let it go, man. Let it
go.
