listening to Maladroit 20 years after its release offers a vastly different experience because we have so much more perspective. The self-produced Maladroit continues Weezer’s interest in hooks and only hooks, but diverges from “Green” by upping the distortion and going full-on, cartoonishly rawwwwwk across the album’s 13 tracks. Maladroit, like its predecessor, portends a two-decade future of aggressive mediocrity laced with moments of brilliance. It is, like Weezer’s bespectacled leader, brimming with ideas and frustrating contradiction. It is the first album to feature bassist Scott Shriner (who replaced the late Mikey Welsh, who replaced Matt Sharp) and marks a fascinating moment where Weezer embraces a punk/DIY ethos by sharing. Maladroit‘s songs on their website as it was in production, much to their label’s chagrin.
Even if Geffen Records wasn’t happy about Weezer sharing new music free of charge on the still-young internet, the strategy did show how much the band understood their fan base, who spent ample amounts of time debating their work on message boards, both official and unofficial. As that 2002 profile reminds us, Weezer’s fans have always been extremely engaged and outspoken. Tossing their new material out like feed in a chicken coop was a really forward-thinking move considering the various ways bands would go on to cut record labels out of the equation. So was using that process to partially crowdsource the tracklist; a 2000 track called “Slob” made it onto Maladroit at fans’ urging. It’s easy to see why listeners would’ve rallied for that cut: “Slob” marks an especially vulnerable point on an otherwise surface-y album where Cuomo is feeling agoraphobic, lashing out: “Leave me alone/ I won’t pick up the phone/ And I won’t listen to messages/ Sent by someone who calls up and says/ I don’t like how you’re living my life.”
As of May 2002 Guitar World interview with Cuomo reflects the frontman’s beyond-complicated (to say the least) relationship with his fans, where he tells the interviewer: “Most of the time I’m a pretty cool character.” Regarding the fact that his fans of him may expect him to be “distraught” more often than not, he really goes off:
Cuomo: Yeah, I think most of them would be shocked if they met me, because I’m pretty bland.
GW: Sometimes when you meet the fans, do you feel that they’re disappointed because you’re even-keeled?
Cuomo: I never meet fans.
GW: You never meet them?
Cuomo: Never. I like talking to them over the internet, but that’s it.
GW: You guys don’t do in-store record singing or after-show meet-and-greets?
Cuomo: Hell no! Fans are annoying. They all want something.
GW: Whether it be asking you to sign something or expecting you to act a certain way…
Cuomo: Yeah, or asking me to play a certain song. They’re all little bitches, so I avoid them at all costs.
I admit, it must be look and mentally uncomfy to not only know that you have but to be painfully aware that those fans care A LOT. (That 2018 Weezer-themed SNL sketch with Matt Damon encapsulated this mania perfectly.) Meanwhile, you’re the type of person who cares so much that the caring metastasizes to build a tumorous wall that fortifies your heart against any and all criticism. That just sounds like a really awful way to live. No wonder Cuomo went into a self-imposed exile — the stuff of indie-rock legend at this point — after Pinkerton got panned upon release.
So it appears that Cuomo developed — or always had — a severe love-hate relationship with his followers, valuing their input enough to let it influence Maladroit‘s tracklist but dubbing most of their choices “whack” to his A&R guy. (Again, what a lonely existence, being the smartest person in that proverbial room.) Cuomo was similarly at war with his label, Geffen/Interscope, who asked that radio stations not play any songs sent from Weezer until a formal release. It was also around this time that former bassist Matt Sharp sued the band, alleging that he was owed money for his contributions from him to their self-titled debut (“The Blue Album“) and Pinkerton. Cuomo said the accusations were “completely without merit,” but he still settled out of court.
In terms of actual album content, Maladroit is so much better than most remember. It’s a peculiar kind of aging, and what you think of the album may have everything to do with how old you are. For those ’90s die-hards who won’t accept anything after Pinkerton, Maladroit represents a broken, unacceptable band on a perma-decline. For the younger sect — say, anyone born in or after the ’90s — Maladroit is early enough in Weezer’s overall catalog that it represents an acceptable entry point before things got really bad. (To be fair, lots of people do legitimately enjoy their latter- and present-day material too, and Maladroit probably sounds like a masterpiece to those people.)
If we can just divorce Maladroit from the layers of lore, I think we’ll find that it’s a highly enjoyable, well-produced, constantly catchy affair. It openly embraces a heavy-metal edge without sacrificing pop sensibility. Although Cuomo was singing about Ace Frehley and Peter Criss all the way back on Weezer’s debut, Maladroit marks the first time the band’s well-documented love of ’70s and ’80s riffers like Kiss, Metallica, and Van Halen is just as represented in the songwriting as their foundational affection for the Beach Boys, the Cars, and Cheap Trick. More than anything, it marks a powerful outreach to fans, for better or worse. In addition to sourcing opinions around mp3s, Weezer hosted a submission contest to decide on the album’s cover and got the title from a suggestion on the message boards. As a thank you, fans were rewarded with a special thank you in the album’s liner notes.
Ironically, the album’s contents are the least agreed-upon in the band’s entire catalog, which, if nothing else, says a lot about what happens when self-proclaimed underdogs become rock gods in a sellout-anxious era. Lead single “Dope Nose” comes out of the gate with a blast of call-and-response chants overlaid with arena-filling guitar. Lyrically, there is a case to be made that “Dope Nose” is Cuomo admonishing fans, essentially telling them to lighten up about his lightening up: “For the times/ That you wanna go and bust rhymes real slow/ I’ll appear/ Slap you on the face and enjoy the show.”
The record’s standout single, naturally, is “Keep Fishin’,” a “Buddy Holly”-esque callback to Weezer’s earliest work, ostensibly about a slothing love interest who needs to figure their stuff out. The darker content in “Keep Fishin’” is glossed over with a power-pop melody and a completely endearing music video starring the Muppets. Looking back, it’s tricky to tell whose idea it was to bring the Muppets into the fold — was it the band’s? Or the video’s director Marcos Siega? It provided a brilliant move, with Weezer playing musical guests on The Muppet Show While drummer Patrick Wilson is held hostage as Miss Piggy’s latest love slave and is set free by the Swedish Chef. The band even participated in an MTV Making The Video episode where Pepé The King Prawn takes full credit for having Weezer on and admonishes them for offering sarcastic answers to his questions.
“Keep Fishin’” was such an overarching presence, between the single’s radio-friendly nature and its history-making music video, Maladroit didn’t need more than two singles to make a zeitgeisty splash in 2002. The Muppets were even licensed to help market Maladroit on a wider scale, with Kermit The Frog and various other characters in Weezer T-shirts splashed on every image of the band around that time. This no doubt helped make the band appear more likeable in general — Cuomo is not exactly loquacious in his TV interviews, of which there are very few to begin with.
Across the rest of Maladroityou have a metal-funk romp like “Burndt Jamb,” which rocks a lot harder than I remembered, the excellently yearning “Slave,” and the affirmation-filled “Love Explosion,” which reads like a note from Cuomo to himself re : those pesky, opinionated fans: “Take a load off and bow down/ To the others, they love to call you their names/ They’ve been wanting to kill you in your sleep.”
It’s worth noting that there is a ton of overlap between the recording of Maladroit and its eventual follow-up, 2005’s Make Believe. The band went ahead and shared numerous “A5” demos to their website — and proceeded to scrap all of them and start over. though Maladroit stands alone and is possibly forgotten in the greater Weezer milieu, it reaches back and forward all at once. Its inherent experimentalism and moments of raw honesty like it to Pinkerton, but its pop highs portend future mega-hits like “Beverly Hills” and “Pork And Beans.” Weezer will never make another album like it again (the more straightforwardly arena-rockin’ Van Weezer doesn’t count), if only because Cuomo, now firmly middle-aged, is much more at peace with his band’s tumultuous history. Being the smartest person in the room is overrated, anyway.