I'm so irritated by this album's insufferable, constant spoofing on (sub)urban pop music that every time the six-minute 'The Greatest Man That Ever Lived' comes on, like Rivers Cuomo's parody of Beck's parody of Queen, I'm shocked into something like enlightenment. This is not, unfortunately, a good album. (The bonus tracks are good - I can't keep from smiling at 'Miss Sweeney.' Yet Cuomo's doing accents, damn it.) Like apparently everyone else, I've not had much affection for the post-Pinkerton Weezer I've heard. I suspect this is more about my limitations than the band's, but I can't help thinking Cuomo's outreach is misguided, that he's better suited to paranoid self-obsession and triviality wedded to wall-toppling chords. Sure he knows how to write perfect pop tunes, but what difference does that make? He's not the only one, and 'Beverly Hills' isn't funny enough to not be an affront. That's how The Red Album feels: insufficiently funny. It really does feel like a nerdy, defensive rock-n-roll response to the lunatic eclecticism of Beck's dance albums, to my ears, but Cuomo's music isn't sexy anymore, which means he's sort of missing the point.
It's a pity, because there's enough songwriting talent in evidence on this album, enough cleverness and enthusiasm, to put half the bands in America out of business. That I consider this kind of almost formalist stupid fun a waste of time is evidence of a problem in my heart, not Rivers Cuomo's, but then I don't have The Red Album to answer for, so I don't feel too bad.
