NINE INCH NAILS /// WITH TEETH /// INTERSCOPE ///
	WEEZER /// MAKE BELIEVE /// INTERSCOPE ///

It's a silly fact, but in the context of rock crit, we bored journalist types love to set up flowery narratives of turmoil and triumph, rife with factual inaccuracies and out-right lies. We justify it by assuring ourselves that the yarn gives new perspective and makes the music a bit more interesting (for us, probably more than you). But, with all the smoke blown up asses about the work of the two disparate "geniuses" behind Make Believe and With Teeth-Rivers Cuomo and Trent Reznor, respectively-it just seems useless to masturbate any further.

So, forgoing the kid story wanking and hopeless prophesizing, let's take a look at these albums for what they are: simple collections of songs, situated in the late-era framework of, what most would call, successful careers. Both are significant, decisive releases, in dreadfully different respects: Make Believe is a shit-storm of outright drivel, drenched in "returned to form" promo fluff, that actually fails in every manner that it was promised to succeed, hammering the final nail into a W shaped coffin; and With Teeth is a solid outing from an aging cult star whose just now stumbled over a bit of larger cultural relevance (or more aptly put, a marketplace that's keen on the sound he's been laboring at/tinkering with for years).

Of course, neither Reznor nor Cuomo are all that surprising here. They've got their stamps and they're sticking to them. But Reznor's work just seems far more inspired, rewarding, and perhaps, more interesting than Cuomo's. And that's telling, considering the Weezer frontnerd's years of pathetic work, diagramming Beatles and Nirvana tunes, attempting to perfect some phantom "pop songwriting pedigree" he's chased since the initial tanking of Pinkerton. But tracks like "We Are All On Drugs" and "My Best Friend" are simply inexcusable; jizzy guitar and organ solos bleed into chunky, palm-muted guitar chords that flirt like vapid tarts with the Asian-lovin' Harvard-grad's most trite lyrical clinic to date.

And thanks to the smoke in your ass, that should be incredibly disappointing. When talk of the latest Weezer record began to surface in glossies, the band pledged a new devotion to their old sound, promising the pop of Blue, the fervor of Pinkerton, and the almost-forgivable solo-jones of Maladroit. What they've delivered, though, is something far worse even than the characterless Green, something that amounts to an artistic death kneel.

So, the ever-frustrated Cuomo simply falls further into artistic bankruptcy with Make Believe, while Reznor flourishes. Where With Teeth's lead-single "The Hand That Feeds" and the delectable "Only" work like steel-crane controlled Rapture tunes, reveling in their danceablity and almost-fun framework, next to nothing on the new Weezer manages to work up anything more than a flaccid stroll and a decent-but-forgettable hook.

A while ago, the stymied NIN frontman-slash-spearhead threatened to pack up his alloy synths and charging drums and record a blatant pop record. And although With Teeth isn't it, the album's about as close he's ever (and probably will ever) come to it. Melody laces the affair in such a consummate way that these songs, specifically situated in the world of hot-blooded industrialism and broken electronics, exist without genre.

Of course, that's always been his appeal, but here, Reznor's fashioned a record that distills everything Nine Inch Nails has ever done down to a seething, tuneful core. He's accomplished this without remaking Pretty Hate Machine or The Downward Spiral, without backing away from The Fragile's mammoth composition fixation, but instead gnawing all of it up and spitting it back out in the form of his most rewarding record yet. In effect, he did what Cuomo and company promised. Armed this time around with a mouthful of lean, bloody-razor-blade songs, Reznor and his Nails are sharp, deafeningly angry, and perhaps for the first time ever, purposefully succinct, wieldy, and lucid.

On Make Believe, Cuomo doesn't even show up, though it was foolhardy to even expect that. Since Pinkerton's commercial failure, Weezer's media-lore has been stupidly sorcerous-excessively magical and unrealistic: Cuomo as the archetypal misunderstood artist, who produces artistically questionable records due to a fragile psyche's inability to triumph over failure and his belief that Weezer fans didn't want to read pages ripped from a diary. But what's most frustrating about their grand narrative is that the press promised this as a return. And it wasn't.

At all.

So, it looks like we critics are going to have to find a new tack-maybe one that paints Cuomo as a sycophantic goon, a con-man who downplayed the import of former bassist Matt Sharp as a songwriting force, and cashed in on a strange resurgence led by 13-year-old girls.

Or maybe just something along the lines of Trent Reznor's bitch.

Robbie Mackey