After listening to Raditude, I am convinced Rivers Cuomo is the cop (the FBI agent, the NSA spy, etc.) so deep undercover he can no longer tell the difference between the person he is and the person he is pretending to be. The line between perception and reality is distorted, and the point at which it was crossed is a distant memory.

Even though Make Believe was an exercise in banality and The Red Album was a weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird album with horrible results, we still got occasional lyrical assurances that Rivers was the same singer who bared his geeky soul on The Blue Album and Pinkerton. On Raditude the music is more power pop than ever, with lyrics that cater to 15 year olds– the “cool” ones who wouldn’t know a 12-sided die if it hit them in the face.

It is here where we find our horn-rimmed hero and the rest of Weezer, the same guys who banged out geek rock anthems about crushing on unattainable girls and spending hours of solitude in the garage, singing about letting it all hang out “with my homies,” picking up girls on the dance floor and the inability to stop partying at the club.

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