When to say enough is enough? (Or how I finally gave up on Rivers Cuomo) - Page 2

So which rock albums would you consider "masterpieces"?

One of the ten best albums of a decade doesn't qualify for masterpiece? I mean I'm not going to compare it to Beethoven, but I think if you make one of the ten best albums of a decade the word masterpiece isn't -that- much hyperbole.

Not an exhaustive list, and stretching the word "rock" rather thinly, but:

Pink Floyd - The Wall
The Who - Who's Next
The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Prince - Purple Rain
Paul Simon - Graceland
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks

I really don't think Weezer has done anything that competes with any of these. It's all subjective, obviously. But very few of the albums I loved in my teens would make this list now. With the perspective of years, they just don't cut it anymore.

It's a safe list, and one that many critics would probably agree with. But those are, for the most part, meticulously constructed, labored-over albums that represent a particular type of rock music (one that some might not consider very rock'n'roll at all in spirit, in fact).

When we're talking about a genre that can be (some would say "should be," but I don't go that far) about spontaneity, spirit, and looseness, it doesn't make sense to judge albums as "masterpieces" on the basis of their seamlessness and technical composition, but judging by your list, you seem to be doing that.

I'm not going to argue that those aren't masterpieces. They are. However I think you're being a bit selective in what you let fall into that category. Then again, maybe I'm too inclusive. I guess it's a matter of opinion, but I personally have no problems calling one of the ten best albums/films/plays/tv shows of the decade a masterpiece. Ymmv.

Take a sort of an 'apples' to 'oranges' approach here. Not all "masterpieces" are equal...things can just be a masterpiece of a sort. Ebert was explaining this in response to him giving "Spider-Man 2" four stars, to which people were basically like, "wtf? you think this is as good as "The Godfather?". No, he explained...it's four stars for a superhero movie, where you put it at one end of the scale, and put something like "Fantastic Four" on the other, negative side of the spectrum. People saying Weezer's first albums are masterpieces are not putting it on the same level as seminal 60s/70s rock albums. They are calling them masterpieces within their genre, which is obviously a much more objectively simplistic and less ambitious one, but that doesn't mean it isn't capable of yielding music that is brilliant in its own more modest way.

I used to be a Weezer obsessive. I think until Make Believe, I had everything they recorded, all the rare demos and what not. I was on this weird private message board that Rivers used to post on back in 2002-2004. The problem I have with them is that they're just not the same band. The last time they sounded anything like the same band from Pinkerton was in the Summer of 2000, before they made Green. It's like Rivers lost what it was that made the band special. I try to just enjoy them on their own merits, but it's damn hard when I know Rivers has so much more in him.
Don't get me wrong, he's fine at writing a pop song, but the pop song for him used to be the medium by which he expressed himself. He seemed like a Brian Wilson for the mainstream, post-Nirvana generation. He went from being an artist to being a craftsman. Nothing wrong with being a craftsman, but I liked the artist a lot more.
My take: Pinkerton's failure freaked him out. I know he's said as much before, but I really think it had a big effect on his outlook on what kind of music he should make, to the point where he couldn't make Pinkerton again if he tried. Some of the stuff on that album reveals a strange, pervy guy. To him, I'm sure it was like releasing a diary, and people hated it. And I'm not sure he's even capable of that kind of thing now. It's like some kind of block. I think the closest we'll ever get to that sound is Maladroit, which had a similar looseness in the production and playing, although the songs were still airtight and had nonsensical lyrics a la Green.
I'll probably keep buying their albums, but I won't be happy about it.

P.S. The Album 5 demos that they did after Maladroit before hooking up with Rick Rubin were wayyyy better than Make Believe, in my opinion. If you haven't heard them, hunt them down.

According the Weezer.com, that's the new album cover.

I pretty much dislike Weezer, but that's an awesome album cover.

That album cover is, indeed, rad. I'll be picking it up on release if for no other reason than I can't get "(If You're Wondering if I Want You To) I Want You To" out of my head. Also because I still like Weezer and could care less if Cuomos is a crazy prick.

Greg, do you know what a masterpiece is? It's an artist's great work. Even shitty artists can have a shitty masterpiece. It's not like calling Pinkerton Weezer's masterpiece suddenly devalues Sgt. Pepper or the fucking Wall.

Because from what I'm getting you may as well just go 'wah wah wah the nineties' and be done with it, rather than continue this stupid argument.

I love their debut and Pinkerton as much as (most) of you guys.

But fuck Weezer and fuck everything about that cover. Ugh. What the hell?

Apparently Parker hates fun. That album cover is the balls.

I love fun. I hate horribly photo-shopped jumping dogs and a title as gleefully nonsensically ironic as "Ratitude." Ratidude? Seriously?

Why is their a giant yellow box around the outside of the frame?

I like to think the dog is trying to get the hell away from that title as fast as he fucking can.

It's "Raditude" Debbie Downer.

I'm with Parker. I love funny animal pictures as much as the next guy, but what works as a one-off snapshot on someone's blog doesn't necessarily work as an album cover. It's a shitty design. I guess the best argument you could make for the cover is that it looks like very little thought was put into it, which makes it a fine fit for the title.

Yeah, "Raditude" is MUCH better, Chucky Chipper.

Uhh that's an actual, non-shopped photo. Originally printed in a Nat Geo reader contest, I believe.

OK, so its a "real" photo that looks like its photo-shopped. It still sucks. Almost as much as the title.

Do people really like this? Why?

No, but having it called "Rattitude" and having it be a Ratt cover album would be perverted genius.

Now we're talking!

You are a very angry person.

For the record, I didn't continue this stupid argument. My last post on the subject was nearly a month ago. So late pass, but thanks for piping in.

Funny, you used to be an interesting one.

Angry and fickle.

this is fucking awesome.

for the record, I didn't read all of this thread and haven't given 2 shits about weezer since the muppets video.

Ah, fuck it. I was cranky that morning, Greg.

Too much coffee and Weezer?

Personally, I thought Weezer was alright on Blue, ok on Pinkerton. But then they made a song with a guitar riff lifted from the Munsters theme, and I haven't looked back.

That cover is so calculated and cold, I don't understand how anybody can enjoy it. It screams "marketing" to me. "Hey, the kids love internet memes, and funny pictures of animals are all the rage on the internet. Let's do that."

The art of the album cover is dying slowly and painfully. I mean, we used to get this:



Now we get flying dogs.

To sum up:

- Odette Yustman is in the video for (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To
- Can't Stop Partyin' now features a verse by Lil Wayne

One of these things is very good news.

(I don't think there's enough interest to justify opening a new thread so is this the right thread for album reaction etc.?)

I had this moment of clarity on the Red album. The new single ALMOST sucked me back in.

While I think that "The Red Album" is kinda brilliant in its own bizarre way, Raditude's blatant commercial concerns are often just too damn much to take.

"Love Is the Answer" is easily one of the weirdest songs they've ever done. I can't decide whether the late-90s Disney vibe works for me on a novelty level, or if it's just embarrassing. I feel differently about it every time I hear it. Currently, I'm leaning toward the latter.

That said, I legitimately like:

If You're Wondering (If I Want You To)
Can't Stop Partying
In The Mall
I Don't Want to Let You Go

Maybe I should buy this just so I can have this same reaction. I'll join the chorus saying that I love Weezer's first two albums, and feel something's been missing since then. I liked the Red Album, and think it's the best thing they've done since Pinkerton, but that's not saying much. They still make "great" pop, but it doesn't have the same feel that their first two albums had. The new song seems catchy, but soulless. Is the rest of the album like that?

I know a guy who's a giant Weezer fan (like, unhealthy obsession, almost) and hates the living shit out of this album. He's pretty angry about it, actually.

It's the worst album they've ever made by a pretty staggering margin, and that's coming from someone who loved the Red Album. If You're Wondering is the only song that's not outright embarrassing.

Coincidence?!

I haven't heard a single note from this album yet and I think I'm going to keep it that way. Red was my break up from Weezer. I think I'll just avoid the one more time for old times sake sex.

I dunno, I've only heard the half of it that's up on spotify, but somehow this one's so up front about how frivolous it is that i'm finding it hard to be too bothered by it. These songs at least have a bit of energy, which automatically makes the more listenable than all those stodgy mid-tempo Make Believe dirges that just plod along and sap your life away.

I'm pretty sure the blue album and pinkerton exist in this glowing nostalgic void, perfectly capturing and bottling time and place.

I kind of wish they died in a plane crash a week after Pinkerton was released.

I want to bitch about this thing too.

I'm a later years Weezer apologist, there are even days when I like Maladroit more than Pinkerton (Blasphemy, I know.), and I legitimately like both Red and Green. But outside of "If You're Wondering" (which is great, and probably the best of their later singles), this album is shockingly worse than Make Believe. Why the fuck is Rivers Cuomo still singing about going to the mall? Maybe I'm just cranky and this album is some glorious nostalgia trip, but the whole thing feels pandering and uninspired.

Except I'm still introducing people to Weezer via those two albums, and people still love them. I've had quite a few people tell me that they don't want to listen because they hate everything they've heard by Weezer, but when they give Blue and Pinkerton a try they tell me "These are really good albums. What happened?" I just tell them the lead singer got zapped by the same aliens that replaced Eddie Murphy with an unfunny clone around 1990.

Klosterman has a pretty interesting essay in his new book comparing Werner Herzog, Ralph Nader and Rivers Cuomo. However, I feel very strongly that Can't Stop Partying is the worst shit ever, so I can't reconcile that essay with the new CD.

Yeah, I never really got into either Blue or Pinkerton until around '99 or 2000, years after they'd come out. I was already well into my 20s, too, so I can't chalk their immediate appeal up to teen angst nor their continued appeal up to nostalgia. They are genuinely good rock albums (with Pinkerton arguably a Great Rock Album).

Green is a reasonably appealing listen, but one of the most unnecessary, least ambitious comeback albums of all time. Maladroit is kind of fun and messy, and it almost seems like a warm-up for something that balances the coherent and chaotic like Pinkerton, but we now know that it wasn't.

I don't even understand how anyone can enjoy, much less defend Red, which I'm pretty sure has been proven to be cancer-causing.

Would Rivers Cuomo have worn a Weezer Snuggie 10 years ago?

My main problem with Green is that it sounds like it was arranged and performed by power pop robots. Plenty of solid hooks on that album, enough for me to say it tends to be mildly underrated, but it's all delivered so lifelessly that it ends up a charmless experience. Shame, really.

Am I the only one who kind of likes that Cuomo has been over the last few years showing how little he gives a fuck about what rock critics and Pinkerton-loving fans want? Blue and Pinkerton might be the outliers, while the last few albums have been closer to Cuomo's true personality.

Check out the irony-free cover to Alone II. This is not a guy who's afraid of embracing the absurdities of pop culture, whether it's hair metal or the latest pop-dance-rap-rock mix popular right now.

I've been listening to a lot of bands who are trying to push the boundaries of rock. So it's refreshing to hear a band go the opposite direction, go with the pop culture flow. It's the music of someone trying to be cool but is so incredibly dorky and cheesy. As Spin's review states, the album "is a concept album about, by, and for, total schlubs."
There's something kind of funny, endearing and identifiable about lyrics like this:

The rest of the summer was the best we’ve ever had/We watched titanic and it didn’t make us sad/I took you to Best Buy/You took me home to meet your mom and dad
Your mom cooked meat loaf, even though I don’t eat meat/I dug you so much, I took some for the team/Your dad was silent His eyes were fixed to what was on TV

I would like to give a demonstration/Of what it is I do/I'll take you out to dinner at Palermo's/We'll split a cheese fondue

Whether or not Cuomo is being sincere, ironic, or both, the music is still fun. I guess this makes me a Weezer apologist.

And a terrible, terrible person. Bask in your awfulness, Nicholas. Bask. No, more basking.

*Frowns, hangs head down, and plays Can't Stop Partying one more time*

Quoth Jonathan Richman:

Funny, endearing, and identifiable, and he did it without dropping a single pop culture reference or name brand about 30 years ago.