Weezer | The Red Album | 6.24.08

[SHOOTER]

Their first album since Make Believe and their 3rd self-titled release. 1st single is tentatively called "Pork and Beans".

[CammyCan]

When is the single being released? Haha, Pork and Beans, wonder what thats going to sound like.

[My Life Is A Stereo]

I hope it sounds better than it tastes.

[busyboy]

Weezer Reveal "Red Album" Tracklist, Bonus Cuts
Release date pushed back a week

For the third time in their decade-and-a-half of band-dom, Weezer will issue a self-titled LP containing ten tracks and referred to colloquially by the primary color of its design scheme. Yes, Weezer-- or "The Red Album"-- is due June 24 (pushed back a week from our last report) in the US on DGC/Interscope, and right now, we've got the tracklist.

Should you opt for the "deluxe" U.S. edition of the disc, you'll be treated to four bonus cuts: "Miss Sweeney", "Pig", "The Spider", and "King".

And, should your patience for fresh new Weezer jams be wearing thin, know that first single (and recent Forkcast fodder) "Pork and Beans" will be released digitally this week.

And don't forget, Rivers Cuomo is still asking for your assistance in writing a new sawng. They're up to the lyrics. (If "Pork and Beans" is any indication, he sure needs a lot of help.-- Ed.)

Weezer aka "The Red Album":

01 Troublemaker
02 The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)
03 Pork and Beans
04 Heart Songs
05 Everybody Get Dangerous
06 Dreamin'
07 Thought I Knew
08 Cold Dark World
09 Automatic
10 The Angel and the One

Deluxe edition bonus tracks:

11 Miss Sweeney
12 Pig
13 The Spider
14 King

www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/50078-weezer-reveal-red-album-tracklist-bonus-cuts

[busyboy]

New Weezer Single Scores Quickly At Radio

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

Weezer is off to a fast start with "Pork & Beans," the first single from its upcoming album. The track debuts this week at No. 19 on Bilboard's Modern Rock chart, the best opening there since Foo Fighters' "The Pretender" started at No. 16 in August 2007.

"Pork & Beans," a chunky rocker that references Timbaland and Rogaine, is streaming on Weezer.com. The track introduces Weezer's third self-titled album, due June 24 via DGC/Interscope. It will be digitally available Thursday (April 24); an accompanying video will emerge next month.

Frontman Rivers Cuomo previously described the new songs, which were co-produced by Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee, as "dark and deep and beautiful," and "definitely more sophisticated and adventurous. You'll hear very long songs ... and non-traditional structures."

www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003791833

[SHOOTER]

Awesome.

[busyboy]

Album cover? After releasing a single called "Pork and Beans" I wouldn't be surprised, LOL.

[busyboy]

The album has leaked, except for "Automatic" and "The Angel and the One". It's way too early!

[SHOOTER]

[Active Aggressive]

That album cover is the bizness! I can't wait to hear long Weezer songs. Is it just me or does Rivers look like a paunchy Sam's Town era Brandon Flowers, LOL.

[oscillations.]

Can't believe I once found Brian Bell attractive.

[busyboy]

Weezer Push up Album Release

"The Red Album", Weezer's next batch of ill-informed pop culture references and radio-aimed riffs, is bringing its awkward art to the party a little earlier than expected. DGC/Interscope has pushed the release date of the band's third self-titled record up from June 24 to June 3. Hooray?

www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/50620-weezer-push-up-album-release

[Minimalism]

I'm not really feeling "Pork & Beans". It kills the anticipation I have for the album a little.

[ClevelandRox]

I can't believe after a week we still don't have the other two songs. :(

[musicaddict]

Troublemaker & The Greatest Man that Ever lived

both so good.

[busyboy]

The full album leaked.

[My Life Is A Stereo]

Greatest Man That Ever Lived is epic. I love it. Favorite track so far is the laid back feeling "Thought I Knew".

[Active Aggressive]

I just bought this today despite the negative reviews. Oddly enough (though maybe because I was never that big into the band to begin with), my favorite Weezer CDs were Maladroit, Make Believe and the Green Album...especially the Green Album. I am sure I will love this one!

[oscillations.]

The Green Album = my soundtrack of 2001.

[Active Aggressive]

Yeah...I spent the senior year in Paris...well, first semester and that album was an album I listened to over and over again...also, Macy Gray's The Id, for some reason. We are soulmates, osc! Hahah...I really like this album. I don't know why. It has guts and I like that, despite the bad reviews. I knew I would tho.

[areyoureadytojump]

I forgot to do this last week:

Out in the USA!!

Best Buy $9.99

[blue in moonlight]

I'm loving this cd especially "Heart Songs." Weezer always seems to up the ante on their self-titled albums. None of them can ever top the pure genious of the Blue album though. That album is perfection from start to finish for me. I still listen to it like it's 1995.

[oscillations.]

www.metacritic.com/music/artists/weezer/weezerredalbum

Barely.

[reception]

Weezer guys seem stuck in high school
Even worse, this is a band that seems fixated on mid-'90s alt rock

By Greg Kot
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

"Weezer" by Weezer; Interscope

Rivers Cuomo is cool precisely because he goes so far out of his way not to be cool. He is the perpetual adolescent trapped in a 38-year-old man's body, complete with a cowboy hat and a mustache worthy of a '70s porn star.

But beneath the anti-star facade is one of the most calculating songwriters of the last decade. Even midlife crisis is fodder for catchy guitar anthems designed to make legions of 15-year-olds spaz out in Rivers worship.

Weezer has released six albums in 14 years. Three of them, including the California quartet's latest, are simply titled "Weezer" (the new one is being called "The Red Album," because of its red color scheme and to distinguish it from the self-titled 1994 "Blue Album" and self-titled 2001 "Green Album"). All offer variations on a couple of themes: not fitting in and the liberating power of rocking out.

It's only fitting because Cuomo is now married and has a child. He's a Harvard graduate who has sold millions of albums. We shouldn't expect him to act like a troubled teenager anymore. But on "Weezer" Mach III, Cuomo doesn't want to grow up. The protagonist on "Troublemaker" is still stuck in high school, where detention beckons: "Who needs stupid books?/They are for petty crooks." His sole ambition is to become a rock star so that he can "do things my own way."

"Heart Songs" rewrites "In the Garage" from the band's 1994 debut. After name-checking artists who shaped his world as a radio listener in the '70s and '80s (Quiet Riot! Devo! Eddie Rabbit!), Cuomo returns to the moment he picked up a guitar, formed a band and heard his song on the radio for the first time. "Everybody Get Dangerous" celebrates juvenile pranks (blowing up mailboxes! toilet-papering houses!) and "Dreamin' " proclaims "I don't want to get with the program," no matter what his parents and teachers say.

What else to call this except pandering? As a lyricist, Cuomo should know better, but he's now clearly more interested in market share than writing from the heart, as he did on "Pinkerton" in 1996.

When Cuomo turns over the songwriting and singing to his bandmates on the second half of "Weezer," even the riffs can't save the songs from sounding like mid-'90s alternative-rock retreads.

Order is restored on the closing "The Angel and the One," which allows Cuomo to play rock star one more time. Over a slow-build, lighter-waving arrangement, he ascends to "a higher place that no one else can make a claim in." A place, presumably, where middle-age guys can rock like they're 16 forever.

[areyoureadytojump]

6/28 chart:

10 WEEZER WEEZER (RED ALBUM) 45,921 126,074 -64% 172,520

[JJ]

Anyone know what's the 2nd single?

[Active Aggressive]

Everybody Get Dangerous, according to what I saw on the alternative forum...

[busyboy]

It's "Troublemaker", which was considered as first single. It's climbing the Alternative chart and will be released in September in the UK.

[JJ]

Troublemaker sounds like a good single. I'm not really into the new album, I really don't like that song that goes "sorry" all the time, but it still has some nice little tunes.

[fran182]

i would want everybody get dangerous....