Not-so-new radicals

It should be a welcome surprise when a band that plays power pop — a genre prone to monotony — decides to incorporate wildly diverse influences into its power chord core.

Weezer understands the concept and decided to grab both Lil' Wayne and sitar player/vocalist Nishat Khan for a pair of tracks on its newest album, Raditude.

The problem with Weezer's attempt at diversity, though, is that the band can't seem to synthesize its influences — it simply inserts them into the songs.

The worst offender is the pseudo-spiritual "Love is the Answer," which begins with Khan's sitar and juxtaposes the band's normal sound with out-of-context Hindi vocalizing. It doesn't sound like a Weezer song with Eastern influences, but instead like a Weezer song crudely mashed together with an entirely different track.

 A similar blunder occurs on "Can't Stop Partying," a song so deeply invested in its satire of shallow dance music that it becomes shallow dance music. The Lil' Wayne guest spot is a nice touch, but hearing guitarist and lead vocalist Rivers Cuomo sing lines such as "I gotta have the cars, I gotta have the jewels/ And if you was me, honey, you would do it too" is hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

The track is reminiscent of "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)" from 2008's Weezer (The Red Album), a song fractured into a bunch of unrelated movements that only succeeds in bewildering listeners. Weezer obviously likes to stretch past the confines of its genre, but the group is not particularly good at doing it.

And now, 15 years after the band's lauded self-titled debut, Weezer is also having a bit of trouble doing what it's known for.

But that's not to say the entire album is a train wreck. While the band's prime may well have been in its infancy, and longtime fans have been readying their torches and pitchforks for years now, a good handful of the songs on Raditude display Weezer's knack for solid power pop.

Standouts "Put Me Back Together" and "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" survive some cringe-worthy lyricism courtesy of Cuomo when he reaches the songs' big and tremendously catchy choruses. "I Don't Want to Let You Go" is the album's sole success in genre hopping, on which a programmed drumbeat and electronic flourishes create a surprisingly touching finale for Raditude.

However, even apologists may have trouble defending half of the tracks on the album.

Raditude's general pattern is that if the music isn't interesting enough, Cuomo's poor lyricism will poke through and sink the song. It happens on the trite "In the Mall," on which he sings about how he'll "get change for tokens and a pretzel and Coke," and on "Tripping Down the Freeway," which features a boring stop-and-go verse guitar that keeps a fine solo from succeeding.
 

But then again, at least the songs are fun. For an album so intellectually transparent, it's  still fine to listen to. The guys can still play their instruments well, and for about half of Raditude they put together some decent songs.

And the fans who expected a complete crash-and-burn disaster can rest easy. Raditude may not even approach the success of the band's earliest albums, but Weezer is a different monster now. Fans who enjoy the band for what they are may enjoy an album that is nowhere near great, but still generally agreeable.

And besides the aforementioned genre failures, Raditude shoots by rather quickly. It's just over a half hour's worth of mostly harmless power pop with the odd attention grabber — for better or for worse — every few songs.

Those sincerely hoping for anything more challenging or revolutionary might want to lower their expectations.

RATING: 2.5 stars out of 5

jwolper@umdbk.com