Weezer is set to perform Saturday at Salt Lake City’s premier summer music festival, Kilby Block Party. The musical group’s position as a headliner begs the question, “Weezer? That’s still a band?”
Weezer’s “Blue Album” captivated America with a garage-band transition from the synth-y new wave of the mid-’80s to the emerging grunge of the ’90s with hits like “Say it Ain’t So” and “Undone — The Sweater Song.” The album was named No. 294 on Rolling Stone’s greatest albums of all time and triggered Weezer’s current 30-year anniversary tour, Voyage to the Blue Planet. The arduous tour will have spanned nearly 30 dates at the time of Kilby, encroaching on the upcoming 30-year anniversary of Weezer’s second album, “Pinkerton.”
“Blue Album” encapsulated coming-of-age in the early ’90s, inspired by lead singer Rivers Cuomo’s arrival to the Los Angeles post-pop scene. “Pinkerton,” released only two years later, was artistically grounded in Cuomo’s flee from L.A. to Harvard University, where he matriculated as a college freshman at the age of 25. “Pinkerton” encapsulates the absolute worst of the college experience — identity crises, social isolation and unrequited love. It was, by all measures, a failure.
“Pinkerton” is instrumentally abrasive, vocally discordant, and lyrically embarrassing. The band, previously lauded for their geeky loner personas begins the album with “Tired of Sex,” a powerful reminder that virginity is a social construct. The opening bars are jarring and vaguely kazoo-like, setting the tone for the remaining nine tracks of the original album.
While this and singles “The Good Life” and “El Scorcho” are excluded from the “Voyage to the Blue Planet” setlist, Weezer does include tracks like “Pink Triangle,” about falling in love with a lesbian and “Across the Sea,” about Cuomo’s para-social fixation with an 18-year old Japanese fan.
Lyrically, “Pinkerton” is a shockingly honest look into the mind of a burgeoning rockstar, uncomfortably similar to that of any other Harvard undergrad. While some tracks express oddly patronizing love for Cuomo’s recurring romantic fixation with lines like “I asked you to a Green Day concert / You said you never heard of them / How cool is that? / So I went into your room and read your diary,” others express the newfound innocence of falling in love with “I’m shaking at your touch / I like you way too much / My baby I’m afraid I’m falling for you / I’d do ‘bout anything to get the hell out alive / Or maybe I would rather settle down with you.”
Cuomo repeatedly wrestles a Madonna-whore complex, simultaneously venerating the women with which he becomes infatuated while bemoaning those perceived as chasing his newfound stardom. After each failed encounter, he falls to self-loathing and an even higher reliance on bass guitar (perhaps why bassist Matt Sharp left the band shortly after “Pinkerton’s” release).
“Pinkerton” is spectacular for one specific reason. It is so incredibly and uniquely embarrassing that it would be impossible to write if not 100% genuine. There’s simply no way in the realm of magic or science to compose lyrics like “Across the Sea’s” “I sniff and I lick your envelope / And fall to little pieces every time,” without having viscerally lived that experience. “No Other One’s” “My girl’s a liar / But I’ll stand beside her / She’s all I’ve got / And I don’t wanna be alone” represents either soul-wrenching despair or an equally-eldritch cuckhold fetish.
The album is a pre-9/11 plane crash, but to look away is to deny our own humanity. Cuomo once stated he wished to use “Pinkerton” to explore his dark side. It is an act of Greco-Roman heroism that he returned from that exploration, saw the results and released the album anyway. For that, he deserves commendation.
“Pinkerton” pairs well with car rides, getting ghosted and the Sunday Scaries. Queue it up before Weezer hits the stage for the first time at Kilby Block Party.
