Over the past decade, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has frequently strung his audience along on a rollercoaster of emotion, refusing to let them off until his wish for salvation, redemption, revenge or whatever mood of the moment is fulfilled.
With the disappointment of Weezer's burnt-out efforts of 2001's Green Album and 2002's Maladroit, the fans who have stayed on the Weezer roller coaster will be happy to know finally the ride is getting exciting again.
Make Believe is a studious effort by Cuomo and company that rings with an air of success, even if some points of the album shine less brightly than others. With a track lineup finalized less than two months before the album's release, Make Believe is minutely damaged by several choppy transitions between track sequences. Some tracks meld gracefully into others, while others seem out of place.
\This Is Such A Pity"" is the sole track deviating from Weezer's musical lexicon of style, and while it is an attention-getting track, it detracts from the songs surrounding it. Thrown in as the third track, ""Pity"" is filled with a borrowed excess of drum machines and '80s superficiality.
If hopeful listeners anticipate an album full of the fast-paced, up-beat catchiness that radio-hit ""Beverly Hills"" offers, they should prepare themselves for something different. Make Believe is a rather introspective album with more quiet contemplation than biting expression. But for those few moments of cynic sass, Cuomo delivers head-on with ""We Are All On Drugs."" Making it hard to 'just say no' to a force that created such a great song, this tracks blows you back in your seat mid-way through the album.
Oddly unguarded, Cuomo belts the rare and touchingly heartfelt tune ""Best Friend"" that, for the first time ever on a Weezer album, proclaims love for a significant other that doesn't have bittersweet cynicism or self-doubt thrown in the mix. Its rocking, bouncy melody leaves a window of possibility that perhaps Cuomo's legendary romantic suffering might be coming slightly appeased in recent years.
Make Believe is head and shoulders above The Green Album and Maladroit, but it comes far short of surpassing The Blue Album and Pinkerton. An album of solidly written songs, it will be heralded by grateful fans as a ""comeback,"" but the definitive angst and turmoil of Pinkerton and the raw simplicity of the Blue Album are glossed over on Make Believe-perhaps in an attempt to hide the depth of the band's wounds that have developed over a decade of tumultuous highs and lows.
Cuomo finally sat down and took the time to clear the demons from his songwriting until he was left with crisp, clear songs that might lack in breaking new boundaries, but deliver with gold stars for musicianship, high utilization of lyrical talent and a musical cohesion between all the feuding artistic veins that have come to shadow Weezer's past efforts.
Make Believe is the ""classic"" Weezer album that fans have been waiting for since Pinkerton. Cuomo and his bandmates seem to have finally taken their music seriously, writing for themselves instead of for others.
