Maladroit is the dark horse of Weezer's catalogue. Recently the album has been filling up lists of 'Most underrated Weezer songs', but from what I see it's not so much underrated as it is ignored. When the album was released one day short of a year since 'Green' it got mixed-to-positive reviews that certainly did it no favours. It didn't get any amazing reviews or any harsh reviews, either of which would have at least made it stand out a bit. This is also the first Weezer album so far not to have any especially interesting story behind it - at least in comparison to the previous three albums.
The album was produced by Weezer, who constantly released demo MP3s onto their website and hoped that the final tracklist would be chosen by their fans from these demos. Alas, the band disagreed with many of the fans choices (With several exceptions) and so the album wasn't quite the love-letter to the fans it had been intended to be. But how good are the songs?
Well, 'Maladroit' is Weezer's strangest, most experimental album to date so it varies a bit. Song styles and sounds vary massively. This is evident in the two singles released from the collection, 'Dope Nose' and 'Keep Fishin''. Both are great songs but in very different ways - 'Dope Nose' has roaring guitars Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-ing and 'Hash-pipe' esque lyrics, whereas 'Keep Fishin'' is one of the best pure-pop tunes Weezer have come out with, as well as having a music video with muppets.
The whole album swings from depressed to euphoric every few songs. The heavy-metal riffs and cool-sounding lyrics of the first two songs along with the happiness of 'Keep Fishin'' suddenly slump down for the next 3 songs, 'Take Control', 'Death and destruction' and 'Slob', all 3 of which are darker than anything on 'Green' - although 'Death and destruction' is a little empty sounding and is the weakest song on the album.
Then we get another triplet of upbeat songs, 'Burnt jam', 'Space Rock' and 'Slave'. About half of 'Burnt Jam' is perfect and laid back with a sweet guitar riff which suits Cuomo's falsetto perfectly - it would easily be my favourite song on the album. Unfortunately the other half of the song is ruined by a distortion heavy, strangely dark guitar that makes 'Jam' one of the most frustrating Weezer songs (Not bad by any means - but irritating.). 'Space Rock' is too short to really acomplish anything but is a nice little breathing space for the middle of the album. 'Slave' is great, and is one of the most straightforward songs in the second half of 'Maladroit'. Weezer performed 'Slave' as one of only 5 songs from their 2016 Spotify sessions, which shows how it's endured further than most of the songs from the album.
The last final 4 songs are all very short in feel, and are all good-but-not-amazing. In the long run they are probably the easiest Weezer songs to forget about, which is a shame since none of them are bad, but as such there isn't much to say about them. The album ends with 'Island in the sun' tacked on as a bonus, which is a bit weird as it eclipses every other song in popularity - and it serves as a nice comparison to the rest of the album. 'Maladroit' is Weezer at their heaviest musically and shows them evolving into a different band, but also hanging onto their past and in the process creating a bunch of experiments where some stand up on their own and some don't. It's not hard to see why it's been so ignored but at the same time it's worth looking at if you're a fan.
7/10
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