Weezer
Make Believe
»
Weezer
Make Believe
Geffen, 2005
RiYL: The Cars, Cheap Trick, the Weezer clones that have swarmed all-ages venues since 1993 |
If Make Believe represents any sort of step forward, it's a small one. Much as Maladroit only improved upon the green-covered Weezer in that the guitar solos did not actually echo the vocal melodies note-for-note, Make Believe makes the minor step of lyrically moving from deliberately stupid to bitingly sarcastic. Cuomo let us see a tiny bit of his bruised psyche on 1996's Pinkerton and seems to have been punishing himself for doing so ever since. While the first two reunion albums saw Cuomo practically automatic-writing minor love songs of no consequence and catchy anthems for tweener skatepunks, Make Believe is a bitter, often snide criticism of both Rivers and the fans who continue to find meaning in the songs he wrote so long ago.
"Freak Me Out" is the most telling song Cuomo has written in a long time, expressing his misery with fame in his usual stark terms: "I know you don't mean no harm/You're just doing your thing/But man, you really freak me out." The song concludes with Rivers lamenting, "everyone, yes everyone, is my friend." I had no idea signing autographs was so stressful.
Confoundingly, the songs that are most pleasing to the ear are the ones that Cuomo invests the least effort in lyric-wise. "Beverly Hills" has a singalong chorus that confirms Weezer has not lost its knack for a radio single, but the lyrics might as well be those to the "Beverly Hillbillies" theme. "We Are All On Drugs" makes an effective repeating device of Rivers' "when you're...on drugs" tag, but it's completely unclear whether he's referring to over- or under-the-counter prescriptions. The album is best summed up by the maudlin "Pardon Me," where Rivers repeatedly apologizes for his self-centeredness ("I never thought that anyone was more important than the plans I made") but ends up coming off megalomaniacal ("there's no one else to blame for all the broken hearts scattered on the field of war") Geez.
Since Sharp's departure for the Rentals and obscurity, Cuomo has run the band as a dictatorship, trusting faithful soliders Brian Bell (guitar) and Pat Wilson (drums) to play their parts as expected and going through a rotating sequence of bassists. His songs here don't provide as many opportunities for the memorable three-part harmonies that have been Weezer's stock in trade, and besides a flashy (Cuomo) guitar solo here and there, Weezer songs have never been particularly about instrumental ingenuity.
Make Believe is a failure because it's simply not that catchy. As bitter and twisted a psychological journey Pinkerton was, the songs grabbed hold of you in a way the slick, Rick Rubin-helmed Believe seems incapable of. On a facetious level, it's not even as good as Maladroit, which at least dropped a few tolerable album tracks in among the obligatory video vehicles. On the plus side, Cuomo seems to be picking at scabs again, and maybe by next album, he'll have uncovered something really worthwhile.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.