The Nevada Sagebrush

Alright, I am going to put this on the table before my pent-up feelings cause all the blood vessels in my eyes to burst, leaving me blind and you articleless.

I cannot look Weezer in the face anymore — assuming you can look a whole band in the face.

“Raditude” is the most atrocious thing that Weezer has ever put out. Ever. I thank the lord that my 8-year-old self never had to listen to this piece of crap, in turn ruining the band that probably single-handedly recorded the soundtrack of my adolescence. This album made me sick, literally.

Now that we are past that, we can get down to brass tacks.

For any die-hard Weezer zealot like myself, there is no question that it has all been going downhill. Though “The Blue Album” and “Pinkerton” can both be debated as being the best album (personally, I am in favor of “The Blue Album” and think nothing compares), the point is that ever since those two albums, each release has gotten progressively worse.

I remember when the band’s fifth album, “Make Believe,” came out and everyone thought that was the scourge of the earth as far as Weezer albums go, with shallow songs such as “Beverly Hills.” “Raditude” makes “Make Believe” look like The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

For the most part, “Raditude” solidified Weezer’s genre change into poppy randomness that we found traces of in the also-horrible “The Red Album,” but nowhere in comparison to now. Every song is totally different, with a fading line of album cohesion within a certain sound.

“Raditude” has so many different sounds that you will go from the obnoxiously poppy “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” to the sitar-filled, Bollywood-sounding “Love is the Answer,” to the club-thumping rock fusion song, “Can’t Stop Partying.”

Oh, did I mention Lil Wayne is in “Can’t Stop Partying?”

That is right, people, whatever god you believe in, he hates you. Don’t get me wrong, I like Lil Wayne in a ridiculous college party environment like anyone, but definitely not in any Weezer song, ever.

Even worse, the lyrics are shallower than ever. The general subject matter in most of the songs on the album is about out-of-reach hot girls, school problems and various things that plague the life of a preteen. This has always been general subject matter for Weezer songs, but now it is at its most stupid, creepy and weird. Let me also state that Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer and “mastermind” behind Weezer, is 39, making these adolescent songs sad. It’s almost like Weezer’s lyrical content reverted to this weird fascination with subjects left untouched back in the band members’ childhoods.

If the lyrics aren’t about an old man reminiscing about his youth, they are a sad wish that he could be a 20-something club scenester. Cuomo will go so far as to call friends “homies,” and providing such out-of-place lyrics as, “I can’t stop partying, partying / I gotta have Patron / I gotta have the E / I gotta have a lot of pretty girls around me.”

Rivers, you need to put down the Patron and die with whatever honor you still have left.

As far as good parts, you really can’t find any that would be considered good in the realm of the traditional Weezer sound. If you were just thinking of music as a whole, then I would recommend the first single “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To,” which is a pretty good, catchy mega pop-rock song. Also the song “Let It All Hang Out” would make a good unreleased “Maladroit” B-side.

I feel betrayed. This felt like a spit in hardcore fans’ faces for their midlife music crisis. This album earns a F+, with “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” giving them the +.

This very well may be the last Weezer CD I ever pick up.

Casey Durkin can be reached at cdurkin@nevadasagebrush.com.

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