Home > Denver Music > CD Review > Weezer, 'Weezer'

Backstory: Three years after Weezer’s last record (the popular but annoying “Make Believe”), the aging geek-rockers return with an album that’s both their most reflective and most experimental. After some ill-advised forays into metal and novelty rap, perhaps this is not the best move for Rivers Cuomo…
 
Why you should care: …except that it works, nearly to perfection. The band’s latest finds Cuomo obsessing with his celebrity and self-image, which would be a tired subject if it didn’t provide the bespectacled (or these days, mustachioed) frontman with some much-needed focus. “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)” is epic, both musically (pianos, audience cheers, sirens, chants, spoken word…and that’s just the first half) and lyrically, as Cuomo runs down a list of his awesomeness before announcing, “If you don’t like it, you can shove it/But you don’t like it, you love it.” Elsewhere, Cuomo name-checks his favorite singers (Gordon Lightfoot, Quiet Riot) in “Heart Songs,” almost raps (but thankfully doesn’t) in “Everybody Get Dangerous,” and actually gets out of the way so his bandmate Brian Bell can try out an Eagles-like country ballad (“Thought I Knew”).
 
Verdict: Think of it as the best parts of Weezer, pumped up on musical ‘roids.
 
X-Factor: Think 10 songs is a little cheap? The band includes four additional tracks on a deluxe version of the album, two more on an iTunes special version and three more on the U.K. release.