With track titles such as ‘I’m Your Daddy’ and ‘In the Mall’, I inserted Weezer’s seventh album with trepidation, bracing myself for a mind-numbing assault of horny frat-rock. To be fair though, they earn my respect for not bothering to camouflage their shameless pop direction under any kind of pseudo-alternative guise: they are here to create beer-drinking anthems for college parties and aren’t apologetic about it.
I have never been so inclined to call myself a Weezer fan – although I allow myself a few of their past hits as guilty pleasures (The Green Album’s ‘Hash Pipe’ and ‘Island in the Sun’) – but I understand that those dedicated to “The Weezer That Was” will feel an equal amount of distaste at the commerciality of Raditude. I’m unsure how sincere they are on tracks like ‘Can’t Stop Partying’ (which sounds like a T-Pain club-bashing spoof), but if they’re hoping for wider appeal by catering to the masses, perhaps we should blame it all on the recession?
To be honest I found the whole album hard to stomach. In fact, I can’t help feeling my brain slightly congeal as it progresses. You can try and appreciate their seventh effort as an ode to mainstream, feel-good pop music; but it just doesn’t hold up due to their complete lack of sincerity. Either this has got to be in the running for their worst album, or – judging from the album’s title – it was never meant to be taken seriously and the joke’s on us.
