These days, it seems folks either love Weezer or hate them passionately enough to publicly denounce your friends who happen to be fans. Impressions of Hurley will vary widely – because Weezer’s just that kind of band. There’s an indisputable dance-party energy to their live show that’s positively infectious, but on wax their music becomes far more interpretive and doesn’t always come across as perhaps intended. There’s a formula, a predetermined persona expected upon entry, and Hurley provides an ample dose of it.

But it’s not a return to the mid-nineties self-confessional hearthammers the Weezer soothsayers had told us to expect. Sure, it’s got feel-good jams a’plenty, but does that truly constitute a “return to form”? What Weezer album doesn’t have the kinds of songs that make you want to dance around like a retarded monkey?

For now, we’ll set aside the entirely-plausible conspiracy theories of corporate whoring and smokescreening with the use of John Garcia’s face. Clocking in just under 33 minutes, the next installment from everybody’s favorite gimmick band is definitely more than a ten-track back to school ad.

You’ve heard Memories. It’s inescapable, and succeeds in injecting saccharine nostalgia for that long lost whatever, that long gone special something. But if Seasons in the Sun were a pop-rock jam, it wouldn’t be far off from second track Ruling Me, a tale of falling in love and subsequent subservience to the heart’s new owner. It’s got the kind of chorus to make Weezerphiles sing along with shiteating grins. For casual fans, it’s damn near unlistenable.

“We met in the lunch room / My ocular nerve went pop zoom” is exactly the kind of lyric that the Scott Pilgrim disciples will gush over, and stylistically the band fits in perfectly with the scene. But remember – that movie tanked. It tanked hard.

Join the club of derelicts, procrastinators and proud fuckups onTrainwrecks, a choppy & defiant would-be anthem for every proud loser in Weezland. It’s got universal appeal for a generation of snotty techfiends for whom nothing is cool enough, where you’re hopelessly behind the game if you don’t know the daily memes by 10am and the future just gets in the way of the importance of now. The same people who’s first thought after hearing “concept album” is Green Day’s American Idiot.

Unspoken is a gently vocal-led acoustic ditty, adolescent at the onset, but explodes into full a full Rock treatment that belies the gentleness of the onset. Love him or hate him, Rivers Cuomo’s got one hell of a knack for a hook. The chorus,“..and if you take this away from me / I’ll never forgive you, can’t you see / a life will be broken / a hate will be unspoken,” is positively infectious, giving a contextual break to the rough edges of the verse. You can find this jam at collegiate campfires and on YouTube cover-song playlists in a couple weeks. Guaranteed.

Is it unfair to damn an album based on its lyrics? Possibly, but when the instrumentation is so corrosively predictable it’s hard to feel a strong measure of sympathy. Take the absurdity of Where’s My Sex? for example: “Sex-making is a family tradition / Going back to the caveman days, they were walking around in a haze until they figured it out and said ‘Gosh, dang this is great!” An uptempo bridge two and a half minutes in sounds like another song entirely, resulting in a disjointed return to the chorus that results in a “shit, this again?” feeling.

By Run Away I’ve lost hope for the great promise of a kickass Weezer record. Bland and reminiscent of late-seventies ballad-pop, it’s a mid-album saccharine throwaway, a buzzkill to the ears. But Hurley is pulled from the brink by Hang On, which by contrast hits a sweet note, a promise to return for a love left behind. Bittersweet and beautifully earnest, it’s an arena-pleasing anthem, a dead bullseye for the heart-clutching kids who can’t wait to pump their fist in the air and scream along to every “Hang on! Hang on! Hang on!”

Radio will feast upon this song. You’ve been warned.

The sweetness continues on Smart Girls, another catchy, goofy ode to the brainier members of the fairer sex. It turns off & astray on Brave New World, a track saved only by a highly impressive guitar tone that we may have to attribute to guesting former 4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perry. Well, not so much “impressive” as “not predictably Weezer”. Is that what we’re left with? Fawning appreciation for the occasional rogue flavor? Perhaps I’m being cynical.

The narrative has been laid out far in advance it seems, but don’t buy into the hype that Hurley is any revitalization of early-era “greatness” – this album is predictable. It’s exactly the kind of album one would imagine Weezer making in 2010. That doesn’t make it bad – it’s truly not. There’s enough meat for the fans to get off on, to feed the radio beast and add some more spark to the live show. But let’s take a break from pre-emptively praising every new album with prophecies of purity, some old return to form that makes it somehow better than the last time, by default.

On the Weezer beast rolls, and in the end we’ve got one more album to add to the party mix, three more radio hits to distance us further from The Sweater Song. That’s what Weezer’s good for, and they should be appreciated as such.

If you thought Jane’s Addiction’s 2009 tour with their original lineup throughout 2009 was short, wait until you hear this: Duff McKagan, who was hired earlier this year to fill in for original bassist Eric Avery, has already jumped ship.

Blabbermouth reports that the band sent an e-mail out to the press stating that they ”wanted to thank Duff for helping us write songs for our new record,” and explaining that “We love the songs we worked on with him- and the gigs were a blast- but musically we were all headed in different directions. From here Duff is off to work on his own stuff so we wish him all the best.”

As we reported back in May, the band’s first public performance with Duff featured the new song Another Soulmate. For all that was known, things seemed to be headed in a good direction for the band’s first new album since 2003’s Strays with Chris Chaney.

Currently, Jane’s Addiction have no tour dates announced, though their performance at 2009’s Voodoo Festival has recently been released as the band’s first proper official live DVD.

A few of our LA readers will surely applaud this shout to Crash Kings, a local band with serious chops.

As Johnny has established, Sundays are good for picking up the loose ends, and so here’s another. It’s over a year old, but it’s been making the rounds recently, and Weezer reminded us with a tweet this morning. Crash Kings take on some of Rolling Stone Magazine’s greatest rock guitar songs of all time… With a clavinet. The riffs are dead-on, and it’s an impressive show of artistic resourcefulness.

Sunday mornings are good for catching up on stuff we may have missed throughout the week while grinding away at our day jobs or reading Kanye’s latest tweet rants. Perhaps we’ll make a habit of this.

This week we’re tossing up a video interview between the BBC’s Zane Lowe and Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Joshua Homme from the Reading Festival on Aug 27, which made the rounds earlier this week by music blogs scrambling to harvest clicks off the fact that Josh mentioned ex-Queens bassist Nick Oliveri a few times throughout the 27-minute video.

He’s not coming back, guys. Let it go. Let’s move on.

What most publications failed to mention is that the interview is also a massively inspiring inside-look recounting of Queens’ history, troubles, trials and tribulations as the key players moved from the generator parties of the desert to stages around the world. Josh talks about his upbringing, his philosophy on music, his methods for quality control within QOTSA and much, much more.

It’s hands down the best video interview we’ve ever seen with Josh – yes, even better than our own. Grab a relaxing concoction and get ready to understand why this man may as well be Antiquiet’s mascot.

Queens Of The Stone Age have announced plans to kick our asses with nostalgia this fall with the reissue of their self-titled debut album, which is a bitch to find on vinyl these days.

The album is being released by Homme’s Rekords Rekords, which has also announced the release of Alain Johannes’ Spark (Oct. 5) and Mini Mansions self-titled debut (Nov. 2). It’s been recreated by Homme as it was initially envisioned, with three tracks that were initially cut from the record finding their way back into the mix.

Queens Of The Stone Age will be reissued on Black Friday (Nov. 26) as a 180 gram double-gatefold, colored vinyl release packaged with a CD version. The CD arrives in stores on Dec. 7.

Kanye West is making good on his promise to deliver one new song every week until Christmas. Toss Devil In A New Dress into your ears:

Whether you’re riding hard on Bob Lefsetz‘ immensely original “the album is dead” bandwagon and see this as support for the claim, or just find it cool that an artist is actually keeping his word on time, consistently, there’s no denying that this man is cornering the market on self-promotion. And even better – the song is actually good.

Download the track by clicking this giant goddamned picture:

While wiping his ass with Billy Corgan’s sporadic, trickling spasms of confirmation that his creative well is a dustbowl, Kanye’s keeping himself in the public eye and giving fans something to look forward to every week. And he’s bringing the fire – whether it’s on his own, as heard above, or with a what-the-fuck mix of names like Skwerl’s about to walk you through:

See that? Oh, you think our public Twitter arguments through @antiquiet are schizophrenic? We just switched voices in the middle of an actual article! Sorry about that BLOWN MIND!

So that’s just one of many MP3s Ye has dropped since the Power video painting, for those who haven’t cared enough to follow. Let’s round everything up while we’re at it, so Fernando can bitch about more rap music on here:

Posted 8/30: Runaway Love (Remix w/ Justin Bieber & Raekwon)

Just pretend the castrato is one of Diddy’s stripper/singer protegés or something. It won’t be hard. Meanwhile, Raekwon brings his best to the power player’s table.

Also posted 8/30: Monster (w/ Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver & Nicki Minaj)

Trick or treat. Fuck The Monster Mash right in its ass. I’ve always hated that song. This is the second track off of Kanye’s forthcoming power-collaboration with Jay-Z entitled Watch The Throne.

Posted 8/19: Power (Remix w/ Swizz Beats)

To all that bitched about the King Crimson sample in the original: You’re welcome.

And there was also See Me Now (w/ Beyoncé & Charlie Wilson) posted 8/11.

Update: As of early Saturday morning, Kanye’s been getting seriously real on his Twitter account, discussing ego, Taylor Swift, the asshole he’d become and much more. The raw humanity is a bit disarming, so check it out.

The Canadian retro-rockers from Black Mountain haven’t been getting their fair amount of coverage here at Antiquiet, but that’s about to change. They just released the video for The Hair Song, which is the second second single off their new album, and you can check it out here:

Black Mountain’s third album, entitled Wilderness Heart, is coming out on September 14 via Jagjaguwar. Expect a review here very soon – Johnny’s apparently a big fan of this one.

Bad Religion is gearing up to release studio album #15, The Dissent Of Man, due September 28th. We have an equally cleverly titled new song for you to check out, entitled The Resist Stance.

You can also hear the first single, The Devil In Stitches, over at The Bad Religion Page.

Stay tuned for our full review.

Thanks to Some Kind Of Awesome for the heads-up on this one.

That headline just fuckin’ wrote itself, didn’t it? The Deftones have dropped a new video for Sextape, from their latest album Diamond Eyes… Which by the way is considered around here to be their best since White Pony.

In case you missed it, here’s our in-depth review of the 5-star album.

Yesterday, Apple live streamed its first event since 2002’s Macworld Keynote. It was ostensibly all about music, under a big banner of an acoustic guitar with a sound hole shaped like the Apple logo. You can watch it here, if you’d like, or just let us run you through the stuff worth caring about…

One technical aspect of this live stream was particularly interesting to music and tech geeks alike; It would be done using a streaming protocol Apple developed. The company is gearing up to open a massive $1 billion data center in North Carolina, one of the largest ever built. Apple clearly intends to start streaming a shit-ton of data. Was this week’s event going to announce a new streaming revolution? Subscription based on-demand music from the cloud? The successor to the MP3, blessed by the major labels, with revenue going to the artists?

Maybe someday. But not today.

Here’s what we did get:

Ping, a “social network” built into the new iTunes. We’ve been checking it out, and while the many subtle organizational improvements in iTunes 10 are very welcome, Ping version 1.0 is, for the most part, useless. You can make friends, and that’s about it. It seems like it’d be a no-brainer to expect iTunes to share what you’re listening to or rating in your library with your friends through the built-in Ping, but no such luck. You simply can’t (not automatically nor manually) share anything from your music library, in fact. All you can do is “like” music, and even then, you have to go into the iTunes store to find it first. And that’s if the iTunes store even carries it. It’s no Facebook killer, no MySpace killer… Not even a Lala killer, in a fair fight.

What’s simultaneously frustrating and encouraging is that “featured” members (artists, for the most part) are sharing their asses off. Taylor Swift has posted photos, videos, status updates, the works. It’s probably just a matter of time before Apple works out scaling issues and rolls those enhanced features out to everyone. It’s got a long way to go though, and while it could someday become the classiest way for bands of all shapes and sizes to share music with their fans, it could also wind up resting in the same plot as Google Wave, or Apple’s carpal tunnel destroying hockey puck mouse.

Look us up, though. I can be found as Kevin Cogill (because that’s my name), and Johnny Firecloud’s on there too. Let’s see where it goes.

New iPods. They’re smaller. They’re thinner. They’re new and they play music. Your old iPod is now large and fat and old and useless.

They put the button back on the iPod Shuffle because seriously, did you see the last version? They had removed all the buttons. You don’t need ‘em. You just talk to your iPod, and tell it what to do. Want to see your playlists? Ask your iPod, and it will audibly read through them. Awesome right? Actually, really fucking stupid. And Apple knows it, because the 4th generation iPod Shuffle is just the 2nd generation iPod Shuffle but smaller. They hit the undo button on the weird talking stick.

The new iPod Nano is being called the iWatch by some. It’s about the size of those old school Casio calculator watches, and it’s got a tiny little touch screen. You could wear it on your wrist, but you’d get beat up, and rightfully so. Also, they got rid of the camera, because apparently it’s really important to Apple that things constantly get smaller and thinner, even if it means ditching key features while not lowering the price at all.

The iPod Touch, also known as the iPhone without the phone (which basically makes it the iPhone on AT&T), is thinner, has the really truly beautiful retina display debuted with the iPhone 4, and dual cameras for FaceTime video calls and 720p HD video recording. What’s really odd though is that while the iPod Touch can take still pictures, they’re only 960 x 720. That’s 3/5th of 1 megapixel. Seriously.

New Apple TV. While the Apple TV is a little outside of our usual scope of strictly music related subjects, it’s the most impressive new offering to come this week. For $99, this little (as in way, way smaller than the previous model) box will act as a hub for all the media stored on all of the Macs, iPads, iPhones and iPods lying around your house. You can stream any media from any of your devices right into it via AirPlay (formally AirTunes).

There’s no hard drive in the Apple TV; It’s really just nothing more than a way to send streaming content into your TV (albeit at 720p) through its simple HDMI connector. But for $99, that’s not a bad proposition. And while we don’t have subscription based streaming music yet, with the Apple TV, you can stream TV shows commercial free at $1 per pop. Is it better than cable? Not until you can pay a flat fee to get everything. But it’s a step forward.

Personally, I picked up one of Apple’s newest Mac Minis awhile back to use as a media center, which blows the Apple TV out of the water. Sure, it ran me over $700, but it has a hard drive (and USB ports for external drives), a DVD burner, and a powerful Intel Core 2 Duo processor. While it can do on-demand streaming through iTunes just like the Apple TV, Install Boxee (or Plex, or VLC for that matter) and it can play anything you throw at it; not just what you bought from the iTunes store, or encoded to an iDevice-friendly format. In the long run, it’s still a much better investment. The Apple TV doesn’t even run a web browser, let alone iOS apps.

Oh, and… We got An All New Chord by Chris Martin. That’s a G. Nice try though, dude.

We’re late to the party on this, but an important cause is worth catching up on.

After watching Eddie Vedder, the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines and others discussing the West Memphis Three on Larry King last night, I was compelled to dig deeper into a story I’d paid little attention to in the decade and a half that it’s been within my reach.

The subject matter is grisly: three men stand convicted, one sentenced to death, for the brutal 1994 murder of three 8 year-old boys in Tennessee. The West Memphis Three – Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley – have been incarcerated for sixteen years.

Larry King’s interview last night was rather crude and sensationalistic (as is his style), but several points were made to shed light on the fact that there are several inconsistencies to be examined in the case.

I wouldn’t dare weigh in with opinions or align myself with a side on the premise of a celebrity’s convictions, but the situation does call for a closer look. The case against the trio seemed to be largely circumstantial, and no physical evidence placed any of the three at the scene of the crime. Many accuse the police involved in the case of manipulating evidence, intimidating witnesses and forcing confessions, in an area notorious for its ultra-conservative roots.

Last Saturday, Vedder, Maines, Johnny Depp, Patti Smith and friends joined together at a West Memphis Three Voices for Justice benefit concert in Little Rock. Voices for Justice was created to raise awareness and proceeds for the Three’s legal fund. On Sept. 30, the Arkansas Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether Echols is due a new trial.

“I’m also here to show my support for the West Memphis Three,” Vedder said that night, “and try to raise the visibility of the case at this crucial time … Why are they innocent? Because there’s nothing that says they’re guilty.”

Johnny Depp gave an impassioned presentation, reading passages from Damien Echols’ journal before strapping on a guitar to provide some musical backup for Vedder on Society, from the Into The Wild soundtrack:

After a cover of Tom Waits’ Rains On Me, Eddie was joined by Maines for two tracks. Here’s their take on James Taylor’s You Can Close Your Eyes:

Latest musical star collaboration Fistful Of Mercy also took to the stage for one of their first-ever performances, joined by Vedder on harmony. Check out Restore Me:

To learn more, it’s important to read the writings of investigative reporter Mara Leveritt, and to look into the documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills (as well as a 2000 sequel).

For the Vedder fans, here’s a song that’s among my favorites of all time. Satellite was written from the perspective of Damien Echols’ wife Lorri. The lyrics speak for themselves:

To learn more head to WM3.org.

Photo: Brian Chilson