Weezer EVERYTHING WILL BE A

Two songs into Everything Will Be Alright in the End, Rivers Cuomo sings "we belong in the rock world," a repudiation of the big beat experimentation of Raditude, a 2009 record that found Weezer working with such pop producers as Dr. Luke and Butch Walker. Weezer fans eager for Pinkerton, Pt. 2 are often quick to bristle at Cuomo's experimentations, so when the guitarist sings that they're "rockin' out like it's '94," he's not only not lying -- they went so far as to once again hire Ric Ocasek, the producer of the group's debut, to helm this ninth studio album -- but he's reassuring his audience that he's left all those pounding dance beats behind. The weird thing is, Weezer already shook off the ghost of Raditude via 2010's quickly released indie Hurley, so the emphasis on the group returning to rock feels a little odd, but Everything Will Be Alright in the End does trump its immediate predecessor by being bigger, bolder, slicker, and stickier than Hurley. Some of this is indeed due t