If there's one phrase that screams out "danger" in the music world then that phrase is "side project". While these side projects are occasionally interesting glimpses into the psyche of the musician involved and can help in determining what that musician brings to their main band far more often they're dull indulgent and boring. The Special Goodness a side project of Weezer drummer Patrick Wilson falls firmly into the "self-indulgent" category.

The main problem with this side project is that rather than using the time away from the main band to experiment with new styles of music and new ideas The Special Goodness sound like a Weezer knockoff. It's especially galling that even though they actually have a member of Weezer in the band they still manage to sound derivative and unoriginal. It boggles the mind that this even managed to score a limited release in the first place on anything other than a Weezer fan-label let alone get a worldwide re-release from Epitaph a label that usually has at least some credibility.

Pretty much every cardinal sin that an album can commit is represented here. The album starts out with You Know I'd Like... which is about as original as a retro-themed kitchen but is still reasonably catchy and interesting in a imitative sort of way. It sounds almost good enough to be an album track on a Weezer album which considering the trash on the rest of this disc is high praise indeed.

From here it goes downhill faster than a royal marriage. Life Goes By which has "we want this to be the single" lacks any real charm or appeal but isn't that terrible. That can't be said for tracks like Day In The Autumn The Big Idea and In The Sun which are all basically carbon copies of each other opening with a drum fill and exploding into a simple two-chord arena-rock guitar line. If possible it gets even worse than that in places Inside My Heart proves that the band aren't just comfortable ripping off Weezer they're happy to rip off the Foo Fighters as well.

I don't have much more to say about this record. Weezer are a flawed band that still have a proven ability to produce decent albums and I'd suggest that Wilson concentrates his efforts on that salvageable group in the future. In the meantime I'm still trying to figure out how record company executives listened to this record and nobody piped up and said "Hey this is a great steaming pile of crap!". Maybe they were on coke or something which would be fitting because heavy use of hard drugs is about the only way I can imagine that this album could possibly be entertaining.