Opinz

Rivers Cuomo – Alone 2: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo

Aside from sporting the raddest album cover perhaps ever, Alone 2 gives an awesome glimpse of how great Weezer would be if they hadn’t been operating on cruise control artistically for the last 7 years; it doesn’t flow very well and the production quality is understandably low, but it’s that lack of gloss that let’s the songs shine in a way that the slicker recent tracks can’t; this is Weezer sounding like socially awkward, brooding-in-the-corner Weezer instead of lack-of-personality Weezer who is only interested in throwing out random pop references with quirky instrumentation – there is no “Pork and Beans” here, just meat and potatoes.

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Weezer – Weezer (Red Album)

As hard as it is not to get excited about a Weezer album for anyone who has heard “The Blue Album” and Pinkerton, “The Red Album” does little to live up to that hype; while some of the songs (“The Greatest Man That Ever Lived”) are more interesting than anything they’ve done since, the humor and irony – if it can be called that – in the lyrics fall flat (especially notable in “Troublemaker”, “Pork And Beans”, and “Heart Songs”) and don’t have the same corny-cool quality Weezer is known for…the album as a whole is nearly as disappointing as their recent albums and makes one wonder if Weezer can ever create anything anywhere near the level of their early efforts again. More »