Weezer (Green Album)

Weezer | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 15, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Interscope Records
• ASIN: B00005ICAW
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (714 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,758 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #11 in Music > Alternative Rock > Hardcore & Punk > Emo
  • #17 in Music > Alternative Rock > Hardcore & Punk > Punk-Pop
  • #85 in Music > Indie Music > Rock > General

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Weezer, those geek rockers who topped mid-'90s charts with those oh-so-precious pop fables "Undone (The Sweater Song)" and "Buddy Holly," were almost undone by 1997's bombastic Pinkerton. Their sophomore release turned its back on the band's clean-cut debut, with a thrash approach more influenced by Sabbath and Kiss than the Beach Boys. On their third album (self-titled, like their first, but referred to as the "Green Album"), the band makes a concentrated effort to return to anthemic '60s punky pop, demonstrating that, for Weezer at least, it's rather easy being green. In fact, one could say they're almost as green as Green Day, especially on "Knockdown Dragout." At their best, Weezer show such boundless energy and gleeful aplomb that you'd swear you were listening to a lost Badfinger album. Conversely, Rivers Cuomo's twisted genius makes its way onto the anxious and paranoid "Hash Pipe" and the jittery "Glorious Days," making the "Green Album" the most absorbing and rounded vision from these pop masters yet. --Jaan Uhelszki

Product Description

WEEZER WEEZER

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Weezer: Streamlined and Refocused May 21, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

Some reviewers have expressed a measure of ambivalence about this new Weezer album, and understandably so: it downplays some of the things the band's audience has come to expect and treasure.

Weezer's first record was a kind of dream come true for a certain type of bespectacled nerd--- the sort who plays Dungeons & Dragons, reads comic books, and worships Kiss (the band whose emboldening machismo is only complemented, for such listeners, by a makeup job worthy of the X-Men). For a legion of these dispossessed and marginalized geeks, "In the Garage" was an anthem, and "Only in Dreams," "Buddy Holly," and "Undone" were catchy love songs that spoke to their eccentricities.

"Pinkerton," with a raw sound that aped, according to Rivers Cuomo, the Steve Albini recording style, was a different expression of love, but it was aimed squarely at the same audience. The comic book-reading, Kiss-loving D&D player is often characterized by morbid sensitivity: for such a person (I speak from experience), love provides an idealized exaltation, and is worth clinging to and preserving at all costs, but when it goes sour (as it always does), it creates the kind of hurt that endures, that scars permanently. "Pinkerton," by comparison to the debut, was a cut nerve; it was a hypersensitive adolescent's cry of pain at lost love. With its bitterness ("Why Bother?"), its fantasies of unreal and childlike love objects in galaxies far, far away ("Across the Sea") and its tearful tales of clinging to love even when it is unhealthy to do so ("No Other One"), the record's bombastic evocations of loss hit home with anyone for whom the loss of a love was a vision of the Apocalypse. Like the debut, in other words, it was an expression of the feelings of a certain very specific demographic---only it was generally sad, while the other was generally ebullient.

None of this is meant to insult Weezer's accomplishment: both records were and are wonderful, and could locate the geek in anyone who listened without prejudice. One need not play D&D oneself to empathize with someone who does, or to be moved by the strange innocence and vulnerability Rivers Cuomo projected.

Now the NEW record retains these qualities, but expresses them far less lugubriously. "Island in the Sun" is a more plain-spoken version of the fantasy offered by the debut's "Holiday"; "O Girlfriend" is a soft-spoken and beautiful lost-love plaint that trades in the fire-and-brimstone hysterics of "Pinkerton" for a simple and poignant expression of human loss. The songs, meanwhile, are streamlined, short, and focused, produced for maximum physical force by Ric Ocasek. The record packs a sonic punch, and gets from start to finish quickly. Complaints about its brevity are misplaced; the point of a great pop record is drop a flurry of hooks in rapid succession and leave the listener wanting more. The new Weezer record does just this. In short, it offers less idiosyncratic and individualized portraiture of geek culture, and more pure pop sense. Consequently, it will hit a larger audience and be embraced by those who were somehow put off by all the nerdiness of earlier albums. But it still adumbrates enough nerdy despair to remind the nerds that Rivers is one of them, and that he understands them.

The reviewer who mentioned the early Beatles was smart to do so, but wrong to say that early Beatles records are characterized by filler (filler? where?). Early Beatles records were full of hits, but some were sleepers, while some stopped time the moment they were first heard. Weezer's new record is a more modest echo of such an achievement. Some of its songs, like "Photograph" and "O Girlfriend," will strike the listener right away. The others will sink in sooner or later. Terrific record. Go buy it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Sounds like Weezer May 19, 2001

By Mike Meyers

Format:Audio CD

Weezer return after five years. I disagree with the band claiming the record is somewhere "between Pinkterton and the blue album", though I wish it were true. Production-wise, it's extremely sharp, very similar to the blue album. Musically, the songs on the green album are half as complex (as Pinkterton, at least). The solos (almost all of them) are simply the vocal melody churned out on guitar. Rivers can shred on guitar, but he totally opted not to on this album. Lyrically, it seems practically without meaning. Considering it's Weezer, and their prior song topics and lyrics, this album is weak by comparison. Not that they are BAD lyrics, they are simply pop lyrics. (Rivers himself is quoted saying that "the lyrics suck"...) HOWEVER... despite all of this, you're still left with an amazingly infectious power pop rock album that I don't think should disappoint many people. It's not groundbreaking, but it's just good rockin music that few bands create like this.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars I finally get it... September 13, 2007

By Alex Nennig TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD

It took a while, but I finally understand what Weezer was getting at with the Green Album.

Its a total parody of the Blue Album.

Yes, I said a parody.

Think about it, virtually identical cover, same title, same production, same amount of songs... What really tipped me off, though, was that every single song has a solo, and every single solo is a note for note shadow of the vocal melody. Sometimes to the point of only being two or three notes.

I can't think of any other explanation. It sounds like an entire album doing a mock imitation of Weezer's Blue album. Its Weezer making fun of how generic their own music was on the Blue album.

Which is hilarious, honestly. I mean, if any other band put out the Green album, they'd be hailed as genius satirists. Weezer actually does it, and NO ONE gets it. They completely miss the straight faced sarcasm, and for some reason undyingly praise what sounds like 10 songs that were written and arranged in 10 minutes.

Just so funny...

The actual album is okay, but as I said before its super generic. The lyics, the chord changes, the melodies. Its all pleasant enough ("Island in the Sun" in particular is quite enjoyable), but it lacks any and all ambition or creative thought.

And thats EXACTLY the point. Too bad virtually everyone missed the joke.