Weezer (Red Album)

Weezer - Weezer (Red Album)
Critic Score
Based on 24 reviews
2008 Ratings: #692 / 806
User Score
2008 Rank: #268
Liked by 68 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

90
musicOMH

The Red Album brings forward everything they do best, with hooks aplenty, emotive and funny lyrics, all washed down with the odd frisson of self doubt.

90
AllMusic

Given that feeling, it makes perfect sense that the Red Album is another self-titled record, as it plays like an opening to a new chapter instead of merely more of the same.

80
Q Magazine
Everything is supercharged and melodic, like a poppy version of Nirvana.
80
The Skinny

The Red Album's a keeper, and even though the law of Weezerages says the even numbers are nearly always a return to form, 2014's Magenta Album will have a hard act to follow.

80
Uncut
Starting with irresistible lead single 'Pork and Beans', a chunk of Weezer’s sixth album delivers the band’s trademark combo of crushing power chords, pop-culture references and a healthy dose of ironic self-ridicule.
70
Alternative Press

The Red Album is a wonderful jumping-off point for their second wind.

70
SPIN

With overdubbed voices and multiple key changes, freely goofy tracks ... satirize hip-hop’s self-aggrandizement and illustrate Weezer’s central theme: If a wimp believes in himself, he can truly kick ass.

70
NME
What stops ‘The Red Album’ being a great Weezer album, is – for the first time ever – Cuomo’s invitation to his bandmates to sing and write songs too.
70
PopMatters

Whatever the case, as I continued listening to Red this week, staring at what looks like a reunion of “To Catch a Predator” suspects on the front cover, I started to like it more and more.

67
Entertainment Weekly

In the end ... there is simply not enough here that distinguishes the band from any of the countless suburban-garage imitators it's no doubt spawned.

67
Consequence of Sound
This is a band poking fun at their surroundings: the fucked up recklessness of modern America, represented by the closest thing this world has to hell, Los Angeles. And for that, they do a pretty damn good job.
60
Mojo

The Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee-produced follow-up to 2005's Make Believe, finds Cuomo precariously balanced btween amused/amusing self-obsessed and de facto narcissism.

60
No Ripcord
You can totally love a couple, or even a few songs off of it, and completely dismiss the rest.
60
NOW Magazine
Aside from a few missteps like Everybody Get Dangerous, there really isn’t anything to get all pissy about here because it’s an older Weezer willing to take a few chances and still doing what they want to do.
60
Rolling Stone

It’s rich, often funny material, but in Cuomo’s ambition to make a career-sweeping tourde force — telegraphed by the band’s choice to return to estimable producer Rick Rubin — he badly overcooks the musical porridge, layering on overdubs, packing songs with key-change modulations and meandering instrumental codas, and generally refusing to hone and self-edit.

60
The Guardian
Already christened "The Red Album" by fans, Weezer's third eponymously titled album sees the progenitors of emo still frantically chasing their tail.
50
Drowned in Sound

Weezer – the red version – chances its arm with mixed results without ever truly going as far as it could.

47
Pitchfork
Like the YouTube culture the "Pork and Beans" video depicts so well, the song-- and this album-- relies on a high quantity of short-lived pretty good ideas to distract from a shortage of great ones.
40
Under the Radar
This is oddly like Carrie getting named prom queen--Weezer defying expectations with an early flurry of edgy pop tunes to start #6 with a bang, before it all goes horribly awry and the bad songs come down like a rain of blood.
40
Paste
Now we get Cuomo name-dropping Eddie Rabbit, Joan Baez and "a Cat named Stevens," which makes Weezer sounds like a retread of "Built To Spill," who did the recycled-classic-rock-cliché thing back in 1999. Did it better, too.
30
Prefix

If Red Album’s songs were formulaic, shiny, and easily digestible like everything on Green or Maladroit, the vacuity of the new songs wouldn’t be as big a problem.  But "Heart Songs," "Thought I Knew” — these are just plain bad.

25
A.V. Club

Even after the apparent bottoming-out of 2005's Make Believe, Weezer is a dispiritingly awful record.

20
Slant Magazine
Weezer seems to have driven their old shtick into the ground so perfectly, it almost seems like they’ve purposely become tired and boring.
20
Tiny Mix Tapes
Will diehard Weezer fans dig it? Undoubtedly. And they should, because nothing has changed.
halbery
73

When I was a girl, I had a fear of Weezer. I was told they felt no emotion. That their hearts never beat. But I know the truth. At the heart of the kill, they are never more alive.

Geem
70

Good music 🤯 It's a bit all over the place, and it gets boring at some points but... Holy crap it's good music! Weezer I am sorry for saying you were bad on discord, please accept my apology 😭😭😭 Cold Dark World is legitimately really good. Good on ya' Weez.

Doofy
19

No good songs

IsaacDr3w
70

Weezer being the most Weezer they can be.
What I liked: the highlights, the risks taken and the album in concept
What I hated: self-explanatory
I heard time and time again that some of Weezer's worst songs of all time landed on this album and made it greatly overlooked, I wholeheartedly agree: Thought I Knew and Cold Dark World are the absolute bottom of the barrel in the Weezer catalogue. I appreciate the risk taken (being letting other members of the band take on the mic) on this album. ... read more

JovianCloud
59

Cowboy Rivers Cuomo will forever haunt my dreams. In 2008, Weezer released their sixth studio album (which is also their third self-titled project), the Red Album. In comparison to its predecessor, Make Believe, the Red Album sees Weezer trying out a few new sonic ideas. Unfortunately, even if the result is kind of alright, these ideas are generally executed pretty blandly, and the band doesn't ultimately change up their somewhat stale sound in any significant way.

Though I am not crazy about ... read more

75

awesome, geniunely

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