Rad rats dude

My pick for best album of 2008 was a hard one, coming down between Weezer's Red Album and Amanda Palmer's debut solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. The latter ended up with the claim of the year, but Weezer is still just so good. I seemed to forget that, because this year's release didn't really interest me until I forced myself to listen to it.

Raditude by Weezer (2009) is the follow-up to The Red Album and, while not as good, delivers everything Weezer always has brought to the musical scene. Weezer is weird for me and many friends like me that they are nothing that would fall into our favorite music genres but they somehow make it onto our list of favorites anyhow. In fact, someone I work with claimed to not like them at all only to get picked up by the first single off this latest album on the ride home and has come to love them. I seem to be saying this a lot, as I think I've made it close enough to the end to make assumptions, but this may be the best album of the year.

To give blanket statements, the writing on the record is up to River Cuomo's standard of writing with very few exceptions which I feel are present on every Weezer album, the guitar work isn't as memorable as Hash Pipe days but it gets the job done, and the album is really a joy to listen to. Songs like (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To, I'm Your Daddy, Trippin' Down the Freeway, and Let It All Hang Out are great songs, written with Weezer's typical wit and charm. After seven albums, they still manage to experiment with songs like Can't Stop Partying (a bass-ridden party beat featuring Lil Wayne) and Love is the Answer (a song laced with Hindi language and vocals), which are really well done for such a bold attempt. Put Me Back Together and I Don't Want to Let You Go are perfectly listenable, but don't necessarily bring anything special to the album. The two songs I skip over are The Girl Got Hot and Patrick Wilson's In the Mall. The writing on both the songs are just subpar for what Weezer is capable of.

The deluxe edition that I bought has four bonus tracks which I feel are good enough to have been on the album proper. Get Me Some is almost a hard rock party song, where Run Over By A Truck is like classic Weezer. The Prettiest Girl In The Whole Wide World reminds me a lot of The Greatest Man That Ever Lived from the Red Album and I really appreciate the lyrical work put into it. The Underdogs is really just a fantastic ending for the album, giving the whole experience an over-all feel.

What really sucks is the reason I started listening to the album is because I had gotten Weezer tickets for my girlfriend, the show being last night, and Rivers Cuomo's bus spun out on black ice and ended with his family needing to be dug out of the car using the jaws of life. Rivers has broken ribs, but the rest of the Cuomo's are thankfully unharmed. My best wishes to the Cuomo family, but I hate winter disappears and never comes back. If they reschedule, I will be among the first to get replacement tickets.

Expect some end of the year lists coming out over the next few Saturdays.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor