Weezer has released a new LP, so we can be sure of three things: it will be heralded as the sonic return of the Blue Album and Pinkerton; it will sound nothing like the Blue Album or Pinkerton; it will be crushingly awful.
It’s old hat at this point, so it’s okay, old Weezer fan, to be cynical of the latest Rivers Cuomo profiles, the rehashed retrospectives on the band’s seminal work, the ridiculous notion that, Ya know what? Maybe Maladroit wasn’t so bad after all.
Yes. Yes, it was.
Know, Weezer fan, that the rest of us have given up on that whole “returning to their earlier sound” idea. That’s long dead. What you’re hearing now isn’t music it all; it’s Rivers Cuomo fucking with you. That’s who he is as an artist, you know – haven’t you read the latest profile? He needs to flex his musical muscle with tasteless odes to Yngwie Malmsteen and petri-dish abortions like whatever the hell “I’m the Greatest Man Who Ever Lived” was. Surely, you know at this point that listening to Weezer’s catalog over the past 15 years is very much similar to enduring a canned guitar-solo filler at a live show: the only one actually enjoying the wank-fest is the guitarist; everyone else is just waiting for him to stop.
Go ahead and cherish those first two records like the rest of us. Come to terms with the fact that, like so many things, past work can simply not be outdone. Understand that Blue and Pinkerton, both released during your youth, have been squarely tucked away into your romanticized memory of the past. Not even time can strip away that veneer.
No surprise, then, that each subsequent release seems so lackluster, so devoid of whatever it was captured on those earlier records. How could any Weezer record after Blue and Pinkerton possibly succeed at meeting your inflated expectations? It can’t. It won’t. Most haven’t come to terms with this.
But we have, old Weezer fan. We have.