Much has been written and talked about Weezer’s sophomore album, Pinkerton, a commercial and critical disappointment on initial release. Commercially one can understand that the fandom that bought into the power-pop playfulness of ‘Buddy Holly’ and ‘The Sweater Song’ might find the Pinkerton sound a little too frenetic for their liking, with abrasive guitars and massive pounding drums dominating the mix. Yet the melodies are easily the equal of the band’s multi-platinum selling self-titled debut so it’s very much a case of using the same ingredients but with different measurements, which may have been the reason why Pinkerton was a little too sour for some fans’ taste.
On the flipside, Weezer (aka The Blue Album) and its clean cut chops are often cited by Pinkerton’s avid followers as a little too sweet. However ,shame on those dastardly critics who got it so wrong to the extent that such a highly regarded publication as The Rolling Stone saw fit to re-review the album years after its release and up its average star-rating of three to an all conquering five. Then again, as Leonard Bernstein once said, “I’ve been all around the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic”.
The ten tracks that make up the original Pinkerton record are bona-fide superior party-rock. From the opening cymbal bells of ‘Tired of Sex’, those huge drums battering out as if you were in the room with them, before the moog and bass layer up and the guitar solos come in and own it in a Brian May squealing like a bitch – because Roger shaved his perm off – kind-of-a-way.
‘Getchoo’ continues to bring the noise and is the record’s most fierce track with the guitars sounding almost industrial as they teeter on the edge of feedback. The band recorded all the vocals in tandem around three microphones to give the album an energy akin to the band’s live show, job done as the layered harmonies, sometimes flirting round the melody, sometimes flirting round the right notes at all, all sound perfectly ‘off’ in places making for a thrilling listen.
This trick continues to work a treat on ‘No Other One’ and ‘Why Bother?’, it really does lend to the impression that the band are just rockin’ together in a shitty rehearsal room – although show me a rehearsal room where you can achieve that drum sound and you’ve got yourself a booking. ‘The Good Life’, ‘El Scorcho’, ‘Falling For You’ – Weezer had never sounded this unabashed before, and to this date haven’t managed to re-capture the energy of these recordings on any of their subsequent albums.
Pinkerton’s deal-breaker is lyrically, there’s no other record that rocks this hard and melodiously, that simultaneously wallows in so much self-pity and confused emotions as Rivers Cuomo’s diary-like musings tend to. How difficult it must be for a man, tired of having sex with lots of different girls on the not-so-poetically titled ‘Tired of Sex’. Then there’s the shame of falling for a lesbian on ‘Pink Triangle” that’s hard lines, chalk it up. By ‘Across The Sea’ where Cuomo somewhat weirdly describes his love for a young Asian girl, with some creep-out lines like, “I wonders what clothes you wear to school, I wonder how you decorate your room, I wonder how you touch yourself”, it’s just a bit, wrong. However, the fact that the lyrics can leave the listener somewhat unnerved only serves to demonstrate Pinkerton as a flawed masterpiece; doing what all great music should do, provoking strong opinion, loved and hated in equal amounts.
Being a deluxe edition we’re treated to a host of b-sides, rarities, live performances and acoustic versions of tracks from the Pinkerton-era. The b-sides are the most worthy addition, ‘You Gave Your Love To Me Softly’ could easily be seen as a bridge between the debut and Pinkerton, a tight blast of melodic power-pop in precisely two minutes. ‘Devotion’ and ‘Waiting On You’ are both big-fat sturdy rockers that could have nestled into the Pinkerton track-listing neatly such is their brilliance. Best of all is ‘I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams’ with guest vocals from Rachel Haden. Easily one of the band’s finest ever recordings making you wonder why it wasn’t included on the original album. Another notable mention from the first disc is the inclusion of ‘I Swear It’s True’, an unreleased b-side at the time, although it’s not quite up to the standard of the other flips – the arrangement is a little lacking – but the bones of what could be a corking rock number are most certainly in there.
Disc 2 is more of a dip into affair, mostly made up of acoustic and live versions, and even the most avid fan might find it difficult to listen to three or four different acoustic/live performances of ‘The Good Life’, ‘El Scorcho’ and ‘Pink Triangle’ over and over, as fine as they are. The highlights of this disc are the unreleased ‘You Won’t Get With Me Tonight’, ‘Long Time Sunshine’, ‘Get Up And Leaving’ and the never-before-heard ‘Tragic Girl’. Most interesting is ‘Long Time Sunshine’, which incorporates elements of ‘Why Bother?’ in a theatrical vocal-round style.
In an attempt to keep fans of their latter work sweet, the band has cobbled together a 10-track rarities collection of songs spanning from 1998-2008 called Death To False Metal to be released on the same day as the Pinkerton re-issue. It’s all previously unreleased material touched up to sound like a proper cohesive album. Sadly the results are much the same as much of the band’s 2000s output: over-produced, lacking in substance and sounding altogether throwaway. However the inclusion of Maladroit demo ‘I Don’t Want Your Loving’ is a plus and makes you wish the band included more of the many recordings from this period instead of taking the majority from the Make Believe sessions and their self-titled red album sessions.
Weezer have endured a long and fascinating career, not many bands have scaled their dizzy heights or indeed sunk to their lowest ebbs. It’s actually refreshing to hear a band causing so much controversy just because of their music rather than their off-stage antics – see the recent fan campaign to pay the band $10,000,000 to call it a day. Whatever your opinion, Weezer have made a rock record to rank amongst the finest, a benchmark album, a planet-sized beast of it’s own that has influenced countless of budding rockers, and ultimately that’s the most rewarding thing that any band could ever dream to achieve.
- Monoganon - 28 October 2013
- Randan Discotheque - 1 February 2013
- The Voluntary Butler Scheme - 4 August 2011