June 21–28, 2001

music

Cry, Rivers, Cry

How we ruined the best rock band of the ’90s.

by Patrick Rapa

What’s with these homeys? Weezer has turned and left us here.

Oh no. The new Weezer record sucks, and it’s all our fault.

See, we’ve been coddling them. The lil’ L.A. four-piece showed excellent potential when they were young, deftly slipping their geeky power pop onto radios more often tuned to ’94 jock-punk like Green Day and Offspring. So we encouraged them, buying their eponymous first record (a.k.a. "The Blue Album") and going to the all-too-rare shows. They got a little silly in the "Buddy Holly" video, but we forgave them because they were only kids.

When Pinkerton came out in 1996, we supported their "new direction," with dirty lyrics about sex and drugs. Let them experiment, we said, while Weezer was out enjoying the good life. We convinced them they could do no wrong. Then they left us for five years.

Earlier this year the prodigal sons returned. And we, weakened by radio made irrelevant by Matchbox 20 and Blink 182 (jock-punk for the 21st century!), welcomed them back. Classic enablers, we helped Weezer sell out the TLA and the Electric Factory, fighting for tickets on lines and online before we’d even heard their new stuff.

And now, like an adorable house cat with a dead bluebird in its mouth, Weezer shows up on our doorstep with another eponymous record. That its packaging is so similar to the self-titled debut — the band smiling up at us from a monochrome backdrop, Granny Smith-colored instead of blue this time — smacks of desperation. Remember us, it says, you used to love us.

We knew something like The Green Album was on its way; the new songs previewed at that TLA gig were noticeably out of place between old favorites like the bizarrely touching "Pink Triangle" and the bizarrely anguished "Say It Ain’t So." Suddenly the dancing crowd was reduced to head-bobbing loiterers, and it wasn’t just because we didn’t know the tunes yet. Something was different. The interesting guys who used to burst into inspired non sequiturs like "the workers are going home" were now trying rock star’s lines on us at the bar, belting out "don’t let go" and meaning it. They are no longer bizarre.

The rock song "Hash Pipe" (MTV calls it "H--- Pipe") is deceptively catchy. Singer Rivers Cuomo’s voice gets all high and flighty for the verses, mean for the chorus. The Munsters-style bass line and heavy metal guitar are not exactly original, but the song rocks. Even the lyrics, apparently written from the perspective of a transvestite prostitute (I think he’s saying, "I’ve got my ass wide"), have some of that old Weezer edge to them.

But in our hearts we know this song would have been buried on a previous record. Here in the Green Era, it’s the first single. And the rest of the album is much weaker. Occasionally the lyrics swerve into darker territory, and the music sometimes leans into the inventive side of pop, but mostly this record was made for the radio, not despite it.

A self-described high school nerd, Cuomo the songwriter used to have a soft touch for varying degrees of pain and awkwardness. He only dealt with love in smart, aware-but-carefree ways never more obvious than, "You know I’m yours, I know you’re mine, and that’s for all time," interspersed with some well-placed, "woo-hoo!"s. Now he’s giving us lines like, "Oh girlfriend, that’s the end, and I’m lost without your love."

Woo-hoo.

No, there’s nothing wrong with love, but its always more satisfying to hear it alluded to rather than actually said. Yes, it’s a little thing, but, weep weep, this band used to be good at the little things. You know how many times the word "love" appears on The Blue Album? Just seven. Ten times on Pinkerton. Rivers Cuomo says the L-word 37 times on the new record, which, as it turns out, is about 10 minutes shorter than the previous two.

True, you can’t really judge music with a little arbitrary number crunching (though maybe it should be expected from the sort of geeks drawn to Weezer). But you can’t ignore the facts, either. The Green Album is a trite and uninspired record from a band we’ve come to expect more from.

Still, there’s another way too look at it. After Weezer played "Hash Pipe" on the MTV Movie Awards a few weeks ago, curiously uncensored this time, Craig Kilborn called it "the first time in four years that MTV has played real music." Maybe we should just be happy Rivers and Co. decided to come back at all. A bad Weezer record will always be better than, say, the best Seven Mary Three record. Wait. See how we defend them? It’s all our fault.