It’s easy to argue that the music community would have been better off if Weezer had fizzled out after the initial wave of negative press and commercial shrugs struck Pinkerton. The anticipation for the return of everyone’s favorite geek-chic power pop outfit from the 90s was perhaps unfairly high, but after they delivered a pair of iconic records that brushed against true greatness, who could resist? Yet where can we lay the blame for a series of ever worsening records in the new millennium? (Yes, The Red Album was a step up from the risible Make Believe, but that’s like saying Death Magnetic was better than St. Anger: faint, almost backhanded, praise at best.) Obviously, we lazy music lovers issued a condemnation of Rivers Cuomo; after all, in the ever-changing lineup of Weezer, he was the ever-present leader and chief songwriter.
But Cuomo then gave us a slightly wider glimpse into his expanding grasp (loose as it may be) of both contemporary and old-fashioned pop rock. Along with his first batch, Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo wears the masquerade ball disguise of a warts-and-all, soul-exposing batch of trivialities, tinkerings, demos, aborted sessions, private recordings and everything else that’s the vogue of the tortured artist who dares to slink out from behind the shield of his band. In these ever-cynical times, it’s far easier to recognize the transparency of this carefully calculated maneuver than ever before. Alone II is an effort invulnerable to those that find fault with it. I can’t exactly sling mud at songs that were already labeled as slight oddities or B-side fodder by the very artist who recorded them. It’s a critic-proof album, pure and simple.
But it’s not unassailable by fans. And while the shine of Weezer has dulled immeasurably in the last seven years, the fact remains that I still treasure those first two albums. And for a long time, I deluded myself into believing that The Green Album was just a band trying to replicate The Blue Album and coming up short. And that Maladroit was just a batch of uneven songs that didn’t make the cut on their last one; to return to the Metallica association, a Reload to their previous Load. Nevertheless, a fan I remain. Perhaps one hobbled by a fascination with past glories; where the fault is my own. Or perhaps one mystified by the plummet of a once beloved fixation courtesy of an increasingly uninspired frontman; where the fault is theirs. No doubt, open to debate, but this fan can offer little more than a none-too-hearty “meh.”
As Cuomo and company evolved, there must have been more than just a niggle of frustration. After their mega-selling debut, they stripped away their polish and emphasized the discord, loneliness and dyspeptic fury of their stories. Pinkerton, which remains their defining moment, was met with indifference during its early run. In the years since, its value has grown immensely, particularly among their most devoted fanbase. Maybe since the radio never played their tunes with an iota of the consistency that they spun “Buddy Holly” and “Say It Ain’t So,” Cuomo chalked it up as a complete failure—he even refused to play any of the songs at live shows for a period of time. But then when they returned to waxing their pretty power pop amidst walls of perfectly tuned guitars for The Green Album, initial furor died out long before the year-later release of Maladroit. And that fourth album, a homogenized form of their last three records, sold even worse than Pinkerton.
For that, I can’t knock Cuomo for his seemingly hopeless irritation. But while his pen was already running out of ink while writing the words for Green and Maladroit, the depths he sunk to on the next two couldn’t be believed. His lack of inspiration is what hamstrings Alone II more than any number of curious compositions, unnecessary leftovers or arrangement regurgitations that fill in the gaps. I could care less about the flat horns of “Victory on the Hill,” the amended Songs from the Black Hole-session ambitions of "Oh Jonas" and “Please Remember,” the lo-fi recording snippet of “I Admire You So Much,” or the scrambling tape pretension of “Harvard Blues.” Yes, they are the very definition of gratuitous, but affectations can be sufferable, particularly when none of them clock in at more than a minute. Since Alone II doesn’t need to concern itself with momentum or meaning, they neither redeem nor injure its worth. But when Rivers expresses himself so plainly, he’d better have the words to back up his misery. Mostly, that is not the case.
The name-dropping on the somber, piano-driven “My Day Is Coming” overwhelms its limp but acceptable verbal skeleton—it wasn’t that great on nerdy classics like “Suzanne” and “In the Garage,” so stripped of their coke-bottle glee, it’s far worse. “Don’t Worry Baby” might as well count itself as a Phil Spector-era Ronettes cover—it couldn’t be closer even if Cuomo’s upper octave delivery of the sweetie-baby clunkers hadn’t been there (to say nothing for the Spector hair shock he’s sporting on the album cover). The melodically sound “Walt Disney” features goofy metaphors like, “I've been in suspended animation/Just like Walt Disney…I’m a block of ice.” And then there’s “Can’t Stop Partying,” written with the help of Jermaine Dupri, featuring the helplessly clueless, “I got to have Patron, I got to have the E/I got to have a lot of pretty girls around me.” Sure, it’s framed in sadness rather than celebration, but it reminds us that no matter how good an arrangement or riff is, if the words are so painfully bad, it won’t make a difference (ahem, “Pork and Beans”).
The successes typically hearken back to Cuomo’s earlier reign. There’s “Paperface,” a demo track recorded well before their first record even landed, shedding light on their early Pixies/Nirvana fetish. Pinkerton self-loathing surfaces on “I Want to Take You Home Tonight” (though it couldn’t sound more like a Green Album outtake if it tried). “I Was Scared” and “The Prettiest Girl in the Whole Wide World” are pure fluff, but sound like they could have been the leftovers added to the deluxe edition of The Blue Album.
Other fine moments arise from Cuomo not sounding like Weezer. “The Purification of Water” is a fine performance adding a pretty shine to shoegaze/drone shoehorned into a pop song structure. “I’ll Think About You” is bubbly and “pop-tastic,” and belongs in the more carefree delusions of the early British Invasion. And their surprisingly winning take on the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” showcases a fact that most missed out on: for all of Weezer’s initial documented influence from the Cars, Cheap Trick, etc., most (including myself) overlooked the obvious Brian Wilson connection.
The Red Album found Weezer adding new inflections to their sound, achieving a mixed range of success. But the only times that Cuomo didn’t lay a rotten egg in the lyrical department was when he copied old tricks. If Alone II is supposed to shed light on Cuomo’s frame of mind and his agonized psyche, the only evidence worth sitting through is the occasion when he plucks out a dependable riff or fine hook to season his bland ideas. Weezer has fallen far and, suffice to say, only Cuomo can lift them back up. He’s teased the media about the end of Weezer for a long time, and these two Alone packages were supposed to showcase his “solo-ARTIST” gifts. But for all of the occasional winners, the band ain’t the problem; Rivers just needs better inspiration.
