Pages tagged “weezer”

Weezer’s main man Rivers Cuomo is a smart guy, so what’s he up to here? Hard to say, really. The band’s fifth record opens promisingly enough, leading us to believe that Make Believe is a refinement on the foursquare guitar pop of 2001’s self-titled record. “Beverly Hills,” Cuomo’s love song for L.A.’s embalmed city of the nipped and tucked, is a good smile. Over a big, two-chord guitar stomp that sounds like a Bud Light ad jingle, Cuomo, whose “fashion sense is a little wack” and whose “automobile is a piece of crap,” longs for the place where the “housemaids scrub the floors clean” and “get the spaces in between.”

This is good, solid Weezer stuff—ironic but not particularly clever, catchy but not unusually so. That’s all we can ask of Cuomo, really; he just wants to be your little sister’s nerdy crush, an egghead with a big amp. As long as Cuomo sticks to that spirit of mild-mannered subversion—of singing heartfelt songs out the side of his mouth—Make Believe works and is at times immensely pleasurable.

But get a little deeper into the record, and something disturbing emerges: the sound of a good songwriter getting banality mixed up with sincerity. Or is he? How are we to take lines like “When everything is wrong I come talk to you / You make things alright when I’m feelin’ blue,” from the jaunty “My Best Friend?” And what about “We should all give our love to each other / Not this hate that destroys us,” from the synth-driven “This is Such A Pity?”

Are these Rod McKuen-esque lyrics to be accepted at face value, or is Cuomo merely subverting the entire notion of the love song? Given that Cuomo is one of the most self-aware of songwriters, it’s a vexing question. Suffice it to say that the new Weezer record seems to be the confessions of a bifurcated mind, a songwriter who can revel in moon-June banalities because they’re fun to play around with, but who can also rise above them when he wants to.

The music itself is Make Believe’s saving grace. Again, nothing startling, but it’s all sturdy. Cuomo leans hard on mid-tempo guitar rock, all staccato 16th notes and stoopid, stomping drums. “We Are All On Drugs,” a song that that will no doubt be getting a lot of attention, is a pile-driver anchored by the choral refrain “I wanna confiscate your drugs!” (Don’t we all, River, don’t we all.) “Haunt You Everyday” is Cuomo’s “November Rain,” a piano epic that may or may not be about a murderous stalker. “Pardon Me” is Cuomo at his self-pitying best, a wistful bit of self-recrimination only Weezer can pull off without sounding completely absurd.

On balance, Make Believe is a fine pop record, with an overlay of Comedy Central humor that makes it neither the best nor the worst album this band has recorded. Now, where are those confiscated drugs…

There’s a ball at the Roseland tonight here in Manhattan. Not your typical dressed-to-the-nines soirée of old—ladies in silk gowns, men in tuxedos, light dinnertime jazz. No, tonight’s gala brings a throng of kids dressed in flannel shirts, too-tight-to-fit Ts, secondhand sweaters, black-framed glasses and worn-through jeans. And Weezer is the house band.

With their giant “W” flashing behind them like a Christmas tree, Weezer dives straight into “Tired of Sex” from quintessential sadcore album, Pinkerton, the young crowd doubling lead singer Rivers Cuomo on every word. At the song’s conclusion, Cuomo, who hasn’t moved an inch from his position at center stage since the crunch of the opening note, shyly whispers, “welcome to our show.” A short pause follows with a huge roar from the crowd. Then the band pounds through old Blue Album favorites “In The Garage” (with guitarist Brian Bell on harmonica), “No One Else,” and the obvious crowd favorite, “Buddy Holly.” The band continues with the apologetic “Pardon Me,” a track from their latest album, Make Believe, the Green Album gem, “Photograph,” and their strongest new cut, “Hold Me,” a loud-soft-loud tune that’s straight out of the mid-’90s grunge scene from which Weezer materialized.

“I’m gonna step back, and Brian’s gonna sing a song,” Cuomo says, smiling, then looking over at Bell and the crowd embarrassedly. Cuomo literally steps back, while Bell takes the reigns on “Getchoo.” Bell, a fine singer in his own right, gives it a slightly slower tempo but seems to be doing little more than his best Rivers Cuomo impression. The song, however, rocks just as hard as it would with Cuomo singing (and drummer Pat Wilson sings close harmonies from behind the drum kit he’s absolutely abusing). After standing in the shadows for the entire song, Cuomo steps back into place at center stage and strums the opening riff of “Say It Ain’t So.” At this point, the people in the crowd are hitting every word at the top of their lungs—even giving Weezer a mini-ovation after the first chorus. During the guitar solo, which is perfect in its simplicity, Cuomo stares at the ceiling, seemingly enjoying every note just as much as the crowd is. At the beginning of the following song, another newbie called “We Are All On Drugs,” a female fan throws an unidentified article of lingerie on stage. Weezer bassist, Scott Shriner, looks at the small heap of clothing for half a second, then continues pounding his bass. Now that’s true musicianship.

The set’s climax happens during a sickeningly good “My Name Is Jonas.” The opening is played on a clean-toned Gibson Les Paul, the crowd ebbing and flowing to every beat, before the build up—“the workers are going home, the workers are going home”—transforms the crowd into a frothing pit of pandemonium. When the guitar solo explodes and the tempo speeds up to double-time, the crowd become a blur of bodies and flailing arms.

Weezer comes back after a short break for an encore, playing “Undone (The Sweater Song),” complete with the dialogic party-time vocals from the album version, performed by bassist Shriner (doing the female voice) and guitarist Bell (doing the male voice). The last song is “The Good Life,” and why not? Life is good. In fact, it’s so damned good that at the song’s conclusion, Cuomo and Shriner stay on stage for five more minutes—backs to the screaming audience, their guitars and bodies up against their giant amplifiers, letting the sweet reverberations of feedback soak through as long as possible. The night ends as the two leave the stage, their guitars still feeding-back into oblivion.

Looking back on the bands dominating radio station playlists in 1993, it’s not hard to understand why so many labels passed on Weezer before the four-piece eventually signed with Geffen. Electronic-based mainstays of the ’80s like Depeche Mode and New Order were enjoying considerable success with their latest releases. Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots, churning out angst-laden arena rock, were busy riding the tidal wave of grunge’s surging popularity. And the Spin Doctors, well, nobody is quite sure exactly what they were doing. But while each of the aforementioned bands had its own comfortable niche—the alt-rock pioneers, the angry rebels, the funky party band with the heart of gold—Weezer stuck out like an oddly-spelled thumb. As Geffen A&R rep Todd Sullivan writes in the liner notes to the reissued Weezer, “they played sloppy, they looked like normal schleps, didn’t have that rock star presence, wore glasses.” But as Sullivan and millions of listeners found, Weezer’s songs caused the group to transcend any sort of predisposed notion of what a modern rock band should sound (or look) like.

Ten years after the Blue Album’s release, it’s clear Weezer has had a significant influence. (Check any fledgling alternative band’s “bass player wanted” flyer and either Weezer is listed, or they’re trying to play it off like they think the band is just OK while secretly burning incense at home in front of a giant “W”-shaped shrine.) While Nirvana reopened the doors to simple, unadorned, bare-bones rock, it did so with an overwhelming sense of torment and rebellion. The songs on Weezer are also unschooled, but they’re less anguished and more frustrated; less revolutionary, more… geeky. And that’s the charm of Weezer, isn’t it? All of a sudden, uncool is miraculously, inexplicably cool. Vocalist/guitarist Rivers Cuomo’s horn-rimmed glasses may have been considered dorky at the time, but some variation of them can now be found at mall LensCrafters locations the world over. His songs, dealing with loquacious girlfriends, suburban dislocation, unraveling sweaters (huh?) and more, may seem trivial compared to some other artists’ “big idea” songs, but they clearly resonate with like-minded geeks across the globe, those less concerned with foreign policy than the mad crush they have on their chemistry-lab partners.

So the reissued, augmented Blue Album is a welcome treat. Not so much because of the remastered tracks from the original album—it’s doubtful anyone other than audio engineers will notice a difference—but because of the added artwork and liner notes and the second disc full of b-sides, live tracks and previously unreleased recordings. And, of course, the feeling of buying a great album all over again.