Weezer: Hurley & Death to False Metal

I'm not going to commit critical suicide by saying these are great albums. I know we're all open-minded here, but I feel like it might strain my fledgling credibility a bit too much for me to go to bat for these recent Weezer discs, which didn't set the world on fire. However, I'm going to begin with the hopefully-agreeable assertion that Weezer is a very good band.

Note my present-tense wording: Weezer is a good band. It's not that they were a good band when they recorded their first two albums. They're still out there doing a good job making enjoyable music. As recently as the (likewise-maligned) Make Believe, they recorded "Perfect Situation," one of the best singles of its decade. If there wasn't something fundamentally enjoyable about Weezer, I don't think people would be disappointed when they release a new album, they'd be completely apathetic.

So anyway, before I continue, let me issue this disclaimer: I got my copies of Weezer's Hurley and Death to False Metal albums for free from work. They were demo copies nobody else wanted. I probably wouldn't have paid for the privilege of hearing them, which is going to colour my review.

Rest assured, these are not great albums. They're not Pinkerton and there's no "Perfect Situation," but between the two of them, there are more than a couple tracks worth the $0.99 you'd have to pay for it on iTunes.

In fact, Hurley gets off to a nice start. As far as singles go, "Memories" has a better hook than most of their recent singles to. "Ruling Me" has the kind of pop sheen that reminds why early Weezer is often referenced in the same breath as the Cars. "Trainwrecks" and "Run Away" make good classicist midtempo ballads, and "Unspoken" builds into a great encapsulation of indistinct teen rage, and "Hang On" makes for a good emotional release. None of these songs are excellent, and I wouldn't say most of them are worth humming to yourself, but their forgettableness creates a paradoxical situation where you might find yourself listening to a song for the fifth or sixth time, not remembering what it actually sounds like, and thinking "Hey, this isn't bad!" "Brave New World" in particular hits me right in the adolescence.

The album commits two major crimes: one is that there's a pair of really bad songs: "Where's My Sex?" and "Smart Girls," which are lyrical duds. The latter in particular, it feels like from the lyric, "Smart" could be replaced with any other one-syllable adjective. Examples: "Where did all these blonde girls come from?" "Where did all these big girls come from?" "Where did all these French girls come from?" The rest of the song doesn't really say anything about girls that are intelligent, although maybe, maybe that's a comment on Cuomo's narrator's relative dumbness, that he doesn't even know what to say about the smart girls.

The other "crime" is that the album is generally repetitive. The songs don't tend to distinguish themselves, so you've got ballads A B and C and anthems D E and F, all with a sort of impersonal sheen that has been increasingly characteristic of the band since the early 2000's. The album's problem is then that it doesn't distinguish itself from itself.

But there's talent in there. The bandmembers play well, and Rivers Cuomo at his worst still writes consistently enjoyable rock (missteps aside.) Unlike so much radio rock lately -- bands I would never deign to review even in this much depth -- this still sounds like music you'd have fun writing, playing, and listening to. The main issue is that it's better depending how close you are to being a 16-year-old boy, because that's generally the level it hits on. Whereas Weezer's early work reached beyond such boundaries, they've settled in at this level for the past three albums or so. And if it's not for the 20- or 30-something rock critic crowd, don't begrudge it that.

Death to False Metal is a bit more inventive, if minor. Conventional rock like the music-as-release "Turning Up The Radio" the ode to frustration "Blowin' My Stack" and the chugging "The Odd Couple" share album space with the mockingly bouncy piano of "I'm a Robot" and the post-new-wave sheen of "Autopilot." The two songs share a subject in non-conformism, but are different enough to justify their coexistence. Not to mention rage against growing up and calming down is nothing new for rock music. There's also a cover of "Un-Break My Heart" which sounds oddly natural.

False Metal isn't a proper album, the tracks have been accumulating as odds n' ends for years, apparently, so some of the tracks have the added gravitas of originating from those glory days. Aside from "Losing My Mind," which is actually heartaching, again none of the songs are excellent but I've never considered criticism to be done in discrete units: that a failure to be perfect is a complete failure. I mean, that's a goddamned moronic thing to say.

I took these albums on for my review today because I was talking with my friend, musician and former fellow amateur music critic guy Joe, and I noted that real-ass pro music criticism is hard: when it's your job you have to listen to a lot of shit you wouldn't have paid for, and so you get jaded. I wouldn't necessarily have paid for these, but I can't see myself getting to excited about slagging them on the 'net either. It's unfair to treat decent music like failed-art if it didn't want necessarily to be art.

Many songs on both albums work hard for their minimum wage, and if you need something decent to listen to, you could spend that money in worse ways. In Weezer's 2010 incarnation you get, if not artistic advancement, then at least an assurance of quality. Both of these albums feature gloriously inexplicable titles and covers: I suggest we take that as a hint not to think too hard about it.

Buy Hurley or Death to False Metal from iTunes now!