Raditude (Universal)

You know what? Raditude's the greatest Weezer album in years. And do you know why I can make that claim? Because, like every right thinking person, I don't expect them to do anything worth listening to anymore. Thanks to the diminishing returns of the previous four albums, any residual hope for the return of the band of Weezer (aka The Blue Album) and Pinkerton has long since burned away – and this new effort is free of irritating moments like Hash Pipe or Pork & Beans where you get a flash of the awesome, clever, witty, emotional band that Weezer used to be. Just in case the joke title doesn't give it away, Raditude is the work of a band who write third-rate songs with infantile lyrics and derivative chord progressions, and by that standard – treating the album as though it was a late-period Blink 182 disc, in other words – Raditude is thoroughly, magnificently tolerable.

That's at least partially because it's an exceptionally unmemorable album. At no point is there a riff in danger of getting stuck in your head or a lyric that's going to make you stop what you're doing: first single (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To manages to take the lively Motown beat that powered Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl and The Jam's A Town Called Malice while being 10% as memorable as either, and Let It All Hang Out gets dangerously close to being catchy, but luckily Cuomo bungs a dude-likes-to-party lyric on top that sound stupid coming from Bachman Turner Overdrive. Trippin' Down The Freeway will disappear from your mind before you're even done thinking about it, the Bollywood-infused Love is the Answer sounds like Wheatus' Teenage Dirtbag plus sitars, and the quasi-electro Can't Stop Partying would be hilarious if one could be sure that Rivers was actually joking, and if it wasn't one riff away from being MGMT's Kids (and Lil Wayne adds a rap that sounds like it took less time to write than to deliver). And, illuminatingly, Put Me Back Together draws on the co-writing prowess of guests Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler of the All American Rejects: that decision speaks volumes about the album's quality. In a nutshell, if you hate music but are still desperate to buy a record, Raditude is tailor-made for you.

Andrew P. Street