Artist: Weezer

Album: Hurley

Reviewer: Gabe Vodicka

Tiny Mix Tapes, 2010

Writing Disorders: Scorn Disease








Most Emo Phrase: “awkward cultural references…hardly qualify as anything resembling emotion.”

Outback Special: “a solid slab of hooky pop-punk”




I jumped for joy when I found out about Hurley. Just as you can predict riots like the weather if somebody threatens a Quran burning, you can count on pasty men in their 20s scribbling angry prose about a new Weezer album. 14 years after Pinkerton, some dudes are still sour on a middle aged band no longer satisfying their emo cravings.

To me that’s hilarious, but I can see you’re not giggling, Gabe. I reckon most balanced people would just let Rivers sell Raffi to the kids and listen to something else, but most music critics aren’t balanced.





Of course this isn’t your first Tiny Mix tantrum over an album that didn’t milk your nut. Not that I blame someone fresh out of college for wanting the title of angriest dude on the subject of radio music. I was that guy too. And after listening to you recreate Iron and Wine in every minor key imaginable on MySpace, I can understand why you’re so incensed. You’re still a dick about it.

But hey, to each his own, eh? You do your thing and I’ll do mine. And the angrier you get about an album of music, the easier it is for me to make fun of you. Let’s start with a slice of irony from your review:

“it’s also hard to excuse Hurley for its general laziness”

Wow, what a coincidence. Read this:

“This band used to be pretty good, and now they’re not so good. That’s that.”

Beyond the obvious, this review was one big salute to general laziness, kid. I got the impression reading it that Weezer was just a dude singing a handful of lines. You spent half the review moaning about how Rivers Cuomo doesn’t mope hard enough to write lyrics as heavy as “So how does this go/and how do I let go.” There was no mention of guitar, bass, or drums other than “fuzzed chords,” but you still found plenty of space for a paragraph-long quote from a disgruntled fan and other richly nuanced stuff like this:

“Weezer’s slow transformation from geeky alternative heroes to mainstream rock bottom feeders has been pretty well-documented elsewhere, so I won’t bother with any over-thought meta-analysis here.”

But…but…we’d been so looking forward to another over-thought meta-analysis of that transformation! Think of the children, Gabe! Seriously though, if by “well-documented” you mean other unpaid writers grousing the full nine about a band’s change in direction, then let’s go ahead and add you to those hallowed rolls.

Speaking of bottom feeder…

“The announcement of Hurley, the band’s eighth album, offered a glimmer of hope in that it would be the group’s first-ever release outside the major-label confines of Geffen.”

Dude, I think the glimmer might just be you taking a break from being a complete asshole. It’s not like you give any indication you listened to this album more than once. But forget about that for a second. “In that it would be”? I’ve seen clearer glass in a nudie booth. Anybody teach you the word “as,” or would using it drop you to the level of Weezer fans after 2000?

Even Jehovah might forgive this muddy corncob you shat onto the internet if you did it in a drunken rush. But you sure made a pageant out of a cam show. Here, read this:

“mechanical dreck that has peppered”

That’s some serious assonance, Gabe, and it tells me something. This review was no crime of passion. You actually put some hours and a can of moxie into sucking off someone else’s effort. God knows I do the same stuff, but there’s a difference.  Far as I see, I’m the bird who eats the louse feeding on the rhino’s hard work.  So if we go by nature’s rules, I’m the predator and you’re a parasite. And I don’t have a problem with that, parasite.

I do have a problem with your horn tooting. You sure 600 words was enough room for your high horse?

“I’m being generous”

“Maybe Weezer deserves the benefit of the doubt”

Right, but only after you spend five paragraphs banging them in the neck. You need me to call a specialist to confirm you’re just being a douche? Yeah, I’d say men who give the gift of music deserve something more than you’re giving. But before you rush to write some more safely anonymous tunes, why don’t you go ahead and cook me a burrito, Gabe.


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