And in more reliable news, Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erleweine gave Make Believe 4 stars, continuously comparing it to Pinkerton.

So, in other words it still sucks.

Fair enough.

blah blah blah.

Yeah, STE's not going to win me over to a band anytime soon.

KPH

I like STE, especially his assault on Bright Eyes.

He's no Heather Phares, though.

Most critics can suck it.

I'll form my own opinions, give me sound clips.

That's actually probably the most accurate thing Pitchfork has ever written. Hate something else, pal.

I hope most critics don't form their opinions off of sound clips. And on second read, I think that you were being ironic.

They probably do just listen to clips, the bastards.

I have certain friends who i trust to give me the straight dope on albums. Clips let me know if a song grabs me in the first half a minute. What's wrong with that?

What bothers me is reviews like this where the all-knowing writer spends half the review explaining why something is terrible despite getting good reviews. Just give the record a bad review and don't tell us everyone else should have, too. That's what makes Pitchfork so pretentious, and thus so often unbearable.

The only reason people could have liked The Green Album or Maladroit is because it reminds them of the greatness of old Weezer records? A lot of people liked Green Album for other reasons, and the reviewers that liked it weren't all just fresh out of high school.

This is great- all of this backlash is going to make all of the hipsters start falling over this like that piece of shit Pinkerton. Prediction- at least two PFM writers have it on their year end lists just to fuck with Rob and Ryan.

Or, Chris Ott starts touring with Weezer tomorrow just to spite everyone.

Tomorrow is a new day and they should have their Gimme Fiction review up to make everyone mad at them for:

A: Gushing over such an obivous 9.3
B: Having their head up their ass for not recognizing a modern classic because of indie elitism.

These opinions will of course come from all of us who never really read the site, just take a cursory check now and then.

I doubt it. This thing is an abortion akin to Travistan, particularly with the whole "once upon a time, these guys were great" angle. I only saw Stylus really mining Travistan for a diamond in the midst of a full-length rough and that seemed to be a stretch.

As to STE, it's interesting that he would spend more than half of his critique of the current Bright Eyes records on "the context" that Conor finds himself in. Is it not the same flaw that you criticize Mitchum for employing in his assault on Weezer? I think all of that demonstrates a contrarian, even embarassingly out-of-touch position for STE, as he has praised the likes of Britney and NSYNC elsewhere, but suddenly can't seem to find a reason why thousands of teenagers put the guy on a pedestal (in short, Conor's not making music for me, but the teenage me).

Don't get me wrong, I normally can't stand Mitchum (although he's swell on the boards), but I think he summed up the level of disappointment a good deal of us mid-late 20 types feel about Weezer Mk. 2.

KPH

It's not all of a sudden. Males in their mid 20s have made up a disproportionate percentage of rock critics for a long time.

Good posts KPH. I listen to this album once and it’s so unbelievably bad that it makes the awful Maladroit seems decent. I think the ranking is a bit harsh but I will never play it again, so maybe it’s right on. Haven’t read the reviews because I already knew it was bad.

Too bad because I wrote about seeing Weezer for the first time on ILM in the Lush thread just last night. They should pack it in and go away for ten years and reform for Coachella 2015.

np: 13 & God

No Weezer album received less than 4 stars from AMG. Nor has any been reviewed by anyone other than Stephen Thomas Erlewine. That's kind of disgraceful.

You should really get that gas leak fixed dude.

If by "calls it quits" you mean "multiple corpses in a carbon monoxide ridden garage with scattered d&d figures" then I agree.

Touche. Mostly. But Erleweine actually analyzed what was wrong with the music and lyrics, getting more in depth and detailed than the Weezer review did. Mitchum's review is 6 paragraphs of stretching the "Weezer has lost it, and you should stop listening to them" notion for no other reason than dramatic effect, and the other two in some sort of variation on "'We Are All On Drugs' sucks because it kind of sounds like this other song, and now I have to question why I thought they were ever good." If he actually had the ability to critique what was wrong with the record, maybe his other statements would have more of an effect to me. He has a lazy ear but a biting tongue in Indie pretension. It's an argument that's easy to agree with if you already agreed with it before reading the review. But if you didn't...

On a side note, I don't see why it's a crime to defend Britney and NSYNC in certain contexts. They're bubblegum, but it's possible to do bubblegum very well. He also defended Milli Vanilli, and I think his defense of them, that the synthetic nature of the music is what was GOOD about it, is a valid and refreshingly modern perspective. His perspective: Britney Spears made some great bubblegum songs and Bright Eyes made a shitty country record. I happen to agree with that.

Now that I have read the review I think he is right on. Weezer (Green) is average in retrospect and was cut a lot of slack because of what they done in the past, when was the last time you played it? Maladroit is horrible and one of the worst albums in my 5,000 CD collection. This guy loved Weezer in the past where finally the frustration boiled over and had the balls to say Weezer is OVER, now go away Weezer, you shouldn’t show your face after this horrible offering.

No offence du&sku, but Green come on…

I used to be on the other side of this argument, when Green album came out. I used to find it so insultingly shallow in comparison to Pinkerton and too polished compared to Blue. But as the years came to pass, Blue Album started sounding blander and blander, and I realized every album directly influenced by Pinkerton turned out to be such overdramatic, self-serious crap, the album just isn't fun anymore. The only Weezer album I listen to anymore is Green, and this is after years of thrashing it. Now I see it for the plainly brilliant power pop it is.

Fair enough and this is one of the reasons why I like Obner, where we can be music fans even if we love Bright Eyes like myself (I think you see why I used him).

If Weezer's first album was Green and this was the third album no one would care, it’s because of the brilliance of the first two that make people so passionate about them. Otherwise it would be just another Indie release on a huge label, or by now back on a small label.

I like, don’t love Green, my real distaste started after that one.

The other reviews listed on metacritic average out to 6.9, so maybe PFM is just trying to keep everything in balance. Being a blue album devotee, I don't expect this to even come close. KPH, as usual, is solid.

I think the problem is that in the indie world there is this hipster philosophy, which is to an extent reacting against the mainstream, and the anti-hipster movement, which is reacting against reacting against the mainstream. Bright Eyes and new Weezer seem to cause perhaps the biggest arguments and most vehement opinions on both sides of that argument. New Weezer is sort of like that new Liz Phair record if she actually seemed to put work into her songs instead of just writing some inane lyrics and letting her producers do all the work. I just hope that Make Believe isn't Liz Phair self-titled bad, pissing off both sides of their fans.

umm...have you listened to the lyrics of beverly hills

"where i come from isn't all that great
my automobile is a piece of crap
my fashion sense is a little wack
and my friends are just as screwy as me"