I have always felt that there is a direct correlation between the departure of Matt Sharp and the massive decline of Weezer. In his lawsuit against Weezer Sharp claimed (and was settled for) that he had a hand in every song that was on Pinkerton. At this point he had already been credited and compensated for his massive influence on Blue. Other than a few singles I am of the opinion that the B-sides that existed during this era far exceed the listen-ability of any Weezer album from Green on in.

If music is simply an applied art, where you sit with your guitar or piano and extensively grind away until you have your finished piece then is this just a case of laziness on the part of Cuomo? I have far too often heard the phrase “either you have it or you don’t” and nowhere does that apply better than in music, this of course begs: has Rivers lost it?

The Green album had some meat to it as almost half the song where listen-able, although the other songs on the very short album were nothing short of terrible. The one surviving component to the Weezer empire is that they are still building great singles. This is still clearly a band that has the chops to create outstanding music. If we look at the last 10 years, Weezer could have put out 1 album compiling all of their best work over that time and it would have been heralded as outstanding. Instead they have released four albums. Each effort seeing one impressive juicy single surrounded by nine or so stale, uninspired songs.

I really liked this article because of the personal stories Carson dragged into it.
The relationship and affection Carson feels for Weezer very similarly mirrors my feelings for Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins, another band with an up and down history. This article is outstanding as it so often drifts between the band so close to your heart and objective interjections.