Rivers Cuomo is dead.
The bespectacled face that launched a thousand garage bands may have resurfaced little more than a year ago before delving into permanent MTV rotation, but for those blissfully stranded across the sea, he appeared little more than a vapid vessel driven by commercial calculation.
Following the intricate pop perfection of the "Blue Album" and the angular, eccentric rhythms of the voyeuristically personal and blackly humorous "Pinkerton," the so-called "Green Album" seemed a bitter joke. Even though Cuomo cowardly opted to sleep through the mid-90s alt-rock meltdown while Stephen Malkmus fiddled and Clear Channel conducted the virtual holocaust of taste on commercial radio that consumed the likes of the Breeders, Smashing Pumpkins and Shebadoh in crackling flames, all might have been forgiven with a valiant return to form five years later had the prodigal son delivered a batch of true Weezer snap, wit and pathos. Instead, the "Green Album" offered a complete betrayal of Weezer's legacy, making mockeries of any Messianic delusions by copping emo's wretched pseudo-sincerity and inane simplicity.
The Malkovitchian entrance into Rivers Cuomo's mind had been slammed shut, replaced with reheated, hollow, Hallmark inspirational drivel like "If you want it, you can get it/ But you gotta learn to reach up there and grab it" and "Open your heart and let the good stuff out/ Water me girl and let me ease the drought."
The angst-ridden and acutely personal delivery gave away to near-mechanical performances hidden under heaps of stale, regurgitated harmonies and forced sunshine. Any shade of angularity or eccentricity was pounded into a heap of mediocrity.
Accordingly, the Blink-182 nation of 13-year-old boys became swept up in island fantasies and SoCal softness, thus spurring the album to decimate any puny commercial expectations while critics harked the triumphant return of Weezer; but the tortured genius who found guilt in himself for falling in love with lesbians and finding solace in Dungeons and Dragons was no longer.
A year later, Weezer again accentuate this tragedy with its fourth effort, "Maladroit." Their hands gone numb from ceaselessly polishing the melodies of the "Green Album," Weezer hope to appear to roughen the edges of its well-oiled pop machine and reveal the "deep" pain lurking below it (love the unibomber beard, Rivers; how adorably disgruntled!).
The album desperately tries to wed the arena rock bombast of Kiss with its predecessors' saccharine melodies and tested mix of uplifting power-pop anthems and generic self-pity purges. The fact that "Maladroit" succeeds so fully in this goal begs the question: When did arena rock become an artistic medium for which to strive? Didn't Weezer see what happened to Creeper Lagoon? Alas, Cuomo had to find something to fill the time he used to spend writing real lyrics, so he's been practicing his chugging riffs and soaring solos which he feels belong in every song on "Maladroit," no matter how malapropos the placement.
Cuomo hastens to unveil his glam rock ambitions with "American Gigolo," "Dope Nose" and "Keep Fishin,'" the power pop Cerberus that opens the album, each with sing-along choruses, thundering but abrasively joyless power chords, and utterly predictable, tiresome structure.
Through the crunching wall of sound come timid swipes at overzealous fans ("If you want me, you can't have me/ Because you got to understand me") and the perennially-dumped Cuomo's obsessions ("It brakes my heart to see you hangin' on the shelf"), all of which are expressed in the heartlessly generic, ambiguously universal lyrics drawn from Songwriting for Idiots.
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Eventually Cuomo's bleeding heart seeps through for some dull power ballads about being ditched ("Death and Destruction"), growing older ("Slob") and, um, the power of love ("December"). Guitars rage in distorted histrionics and melodrama that match Cuomo's detachment just as "Pinkerton's" actually matched the absorption in his creations.
Fear not, though, lonely emo boys of the world! Cuomo knows how much you loved the delicate noodling of "Island in the Sun," the juxtaposition of menacing metal riffs and cooing harmonies of "Hash Pipe" and the warm-and-fuzzy inspirational pop of "Photograph," so he's repackaged all three with the new "unpolished" sound as "Burndt Jamb," "Fall Together" and "Love Explosion."
Aside from a more blatant attempt to hoist a facade of apathy towards acceptance, the aspect of "Maladroit" that makes it more inferior than its predecessor lies in the mordacious crush of the hope that slightly lingered after the "Green Album": the hope that the real Rivers Cuomo might somehow be resurrected.
R.I.P.
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