Weezer
Weezer
There might not be anything in popdom harder to do than make the jump from timely hipness to respected longevity. The two are almost always mutually exclusive. Once-hip bands that continue doing the thing that made them hip are derided for trying to stretch their 15 minutes beyond the laws of pop-culture physics, or worse, ignored completely; once-hip bands that try something completely different are criticized for trying to stay relevant, or for abandoning their roots, or for “sucking now.” Weezer beat the rap in 2001 when their status as proto-emo tastemakers grandfathered in the comeback “Green Album.” Their career since then has been characterized by slow decline, however, and their third self-titled outing (seriously, what's the point?) is an amazingly accurate snapshot of a band unsure where to go from here, right down to its allowance of songs and lead vocal turns by heretofore silent members. The “Red Album” balances Weezerisms both tired and still viable with a few new tricks that are just different enough from the old tricks to seem interesting – see, for example, “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn),” a tune that plays with a classic religious melody in an ambitious, Queen-esque way, and ends up sounding like one of the better tracks off the band's debut. Overall, the “Red Album” is good when its music sounds like the “Blue Album” (“Greatest Man,” the chorus in “Pork and Beans”), and awful when it overdoes the group's trademarked lyrical irony in an attempt to simultaneously highlight and dismiss Weezer's place in the scheme of pop things (the rest of “Pork and Beans,” “Troublemaker”). And it's at its best when the band simply sets all that aside, and writes killer, sort-of-Weezer tunes like “Heart Songs,” drummer Pat Wilson's “Automatic,” guitarist Brian Bell's “Thought I Knew,” and monster closer “The Angel and the One.” Those are the tunes that show Weezer as a band still in transition, and that it just might make the jump. – Scott Harrell
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