Black Sheep: Weezer

Black Sheep is a new feature that rethinks beloved bands' most hated albums.

On today's mix...
Weezer - Maladroit (2002)

Weezer may not be the best band to introduce this feature; at this point, they actually have more widely reviled albums than beloved ones. The point in question, though, is where it really all went wrong, and I suspect most people would point here. Anybody with ears can say that Weezer have never been the same since the post-Pinkerton hiatus, but the Green Album has already been discussed to death. If you still don't like it, you're probably incapable of enjoying pop music. So I'm instead going to focus on the underrated follow-up, Maladroit. Expectations were everything here, and everyone was secretly hoping that Maladroit would be a major return to form, or at least deliver the same incessantly catchy fun of the Green Album. When Maladroit delivered neither, it ultimately ended up getting more or less lost and ignored, suffering the same kind of misguided backlash that led Pinkerton to be underrated for so long.

Maladroit is not quite Pinkerton, but like Pinkerton, it is a heavier, more filling album than its respective eponymous predecessor. Like the Green Album, this album keeps the songs concise and wisely concludes around the half hour mark; however, Maladroit finds much more room for experimentation than the more conventionally structured Green Album songs allowed. Weezer sound much more like a true band here, and they impress by providing both an exciting riff and an earwormy hook on nearly every song. The results are much more consistent and much more visceral than nearly anything else in their discography, and in particular, "Burnt Jamb", "Keep Fishin'", and "American Gigalo" are among the most delightful things they've ever recorded. If the lyrics don't hold up to the memorable stuff of their first two albums, it's sheer energy makes up for it. Had Maladroit come earlier in Weezer's uneven career, it might be a classic.

9/10