I'd mistakenly all but considered Weezer down for the count after their 1996 effort pinkerton tanked. It was a good spin, yet it suffered from a sophomore jinx that resulted in low record sales and a five-year hiatus from the recording studio. I enjoyed a few tracks off of pinkerton, but I suspected that "Buddy Holly" would mark their big one hit and then they would rest on their laurels from that point onward.
Then I bought The Green Album last year in its first week of release. It blew me away. I was certain that if their record company could get behind any one of the first five tracks and release them as singles and videos, they would return to the mainstream with full force. Songs like "Don't Let Go" and "Hashpipe" were that good; they rocked loud and hard, but were catchy enough to lapse comfortably into the realm of "pop".
Less than a year later, they have released their followup Maladroit, another blend of geek punk and sly grunge that's as fun as anything I've heard this year. In fact, it's as good as, though not better than, last year's Green Album, which says quite a bit about its worth.
The album boasts 13 tracks and a typically short length. The songs are uniformly only long enough to whet our appetite, and then they are suddenly over, as a new one filters the ears. Some barely eclipse the two-minute mark. But that merely means that Weezer knows when to trim the fat and what makes for a good hook. Lead singer and principal songwriter Rivers Cuomo isn't interested in dragging out the complexities of love: he jumps into the choruses as quickly as possible.
Many of the songs are amalgamations of early material backed with stronger studio support. "Take Control" lurks in a carefully controlled rhythm, grinding forward with a dark intensity. "Space Rock" redefines hard core major chord triumphs, and "Keep Fishin'", with its doo-wop bridge section, and the leadoff "American Gigolo", each plays with different tempos to keep things interesting. "Possibilities" represents Weezer's closest curb to metal or loud noise just for the sake of it, but even it hints at smoothly driven melody at its core.
Maladroit sometimes skates close to repetition, but never actually backs itself into a rut. By now, it is obvious that the band can ably apply its musicianship with buoyant and productive results. The temptation to hop along like an ecstatic teen while listening to Weezer is still as prevalent now as it was when these veterans first exploded onto the music scene.
