Outside of the self-color albums, the rest of Weezer’s catalog can be kind of a mixed bag of material. I can say this because I love these guys and have listened to their albums far more times than I’d like to admit, but the rest of the albums don’t seem to stack up in consistency or songwriting at times. With the exception of Pinkerton, the other four albums with their share of peaks and valleys we can discuss below. More like I’ll talk and you follow along, Avid Reader.
After the Green Album, dropped the band was pumping out more material that would soon create the skeleton for Maladroit. The band posted unfinished demos of more than 20 songs on their website and I had most of them on my computer, then it crashed and the tracks were gone forever until they were released in album form in 2002. The songs are much more guitar driven with some of the louder riffs that band ever used propelling them forward– yet at 13 tracks it does lose some steam and some of the songs can’t hold my attention.
Pairing up with producer Rick Rubin, the fellows dropped Make Believe in 2005, which I got a free vinyl copy of while in college, and to many of us it seemed to signal the end. There were some ballads and few of the songs were a little too weird for most of the devoted, and some of the new fans that flocked to the album didn’t appreciate much of the earlier material. To me it felt like the band was phoning it in and I didn’t want to see my heroes go out that way. Then they dropped the Red Album and everything was back to normal until…
Back to back albums in 2009 and 2010 gave us Raditude and Hurley, which at one point seemed to harken back to the earlier material, yet pull in from that Make Believe feeling. Some of the songs were too damn catchy not to sing along to, then some of the songs sounded far too immature to be on a new Weezer album, and then you have the skip button on your radio. Part of me has felt that these two could have been released as a double album or just one album of solid material.
There has been no word on a new album of material, and if the pattern goes the same, then the next release should be another color to regroup before striking out to do something different. However, these guys are also known for not following the rules and could keep up the random titles as well. Despite that, I do think it is better that Weezer has a catalog of material to pick and choose from and not just two albums. While those two might be my favorite, I do enjoy watching the band grow and experiment.
