Album reviews

In light of Weezer’s latest album announced next spring, let’s take a look back to Weezer’s last album, Make Believe. Following the success of the Green Album, fans were in expectation of Make Believe much like a cocaine addict needs their fix. As an avid Weezer fan since the Green Album, I was literally enthralled when I heard about the album, having never heard of any real success of bands previous album, Maladroit. The intro track was the overly repeated single “Beverly Hills”, which at the time for me was still pretty fresh. A year passed though and once I finally had this treasure of trendy, I found that I could barely listen to it. The album as a whole left me wanting more of what I originally liked about the band spanning back to the Blue Album. The exact problem I believe is that in this album they have lost the driving sound that I love and instead opted for something “catchy”. While this is an appealing sound, it isn’t what I wanted from Weezer. What makes me feel bad is that Weezer stated that this album was a kind of release for them artistically, but in doing so, I think they brought themselves down a level musically. There are some really great songs on the album but they get overshadowed by the blatant, blatant marketing of the singles. Hopefully, they will learn from past mistakes and maybe shy away from this new, toned down Weezer and return to their previous status as totally awesome.

Songs to Listen to: “Haunt You Everyday”, “Hold Me”, and “Peace”.

Advice: Never listen to “We are all on Drugs” or “Beverly Hills” unless the situation calls for it.





In the career of Modest Mouse, one can expect a unique sound; one that some people despise, others love and most people don’t really care about. With this latest album, though, I think we can throw away the old expectations. “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank” is a rising star in comparison to such albums as “Good News for People Who Like Bad News” which was a good album but wasn’t seriously appealing. From beginning to end, this new album is fantastic. The song blocking can be a bit intimidating with a lot of the really great songs at the beginning and it sort of wavering off at the end, but it’s still balanced in its own way. The creative bass work, guitar riffs and distortions, and the strange use of an accordion in many of the songs makes it a memorable album and it leaves you reeling after listening to it for the first time. Simply put, this is their best work yet and hopefully they can take this momentum into developing even cooler music.