Pinkerton

So today at work, we were feeling a little Power Pop, and so I put on Pinkerton.  It's almost too punky to be called power-pop, but it's the best album Weezer ever made, so I think those two things cancel.

Rolling Stone now acknowledges Pinkerton as a classic, which is funny because it made their Worst Album of the Year when it came out (ah hindsight.)  What's ironic about this to me is the fact that their last three albums have sounded like they were actively going for that award, and yet get respectable reviews.

I can't really blame them though, because apparently back in '96 it was a controversial album.  Some people loved it, reviewers panned it, and the band broke up.  I discovered it in probably winter of '01, and I was hooked from the moment the heavy guitars came in in "Tired of Sex".  I'd heard the Blue Album a year or so earlier, but this was raw - his scream at the end of the verse over those first power chords, the screamed lyrics in the second verse, and all of it building toward the best guitar solo ever in a Weezer song - it's the only solo they've ever done that doesn't feel like every note was written out beforehand.

I was afraid that going back to this album would be a disappointment, because Weezer's last half-decade has been so abysmal.  Honestly, songs like "Troublemaker," "Beverly Hills," and "Pork and Beans" strike me as a fan as insulting - it feels like a "let's see if they'll buy this" kind of a toss-off.  Rivers Cuomo no longer seems interested in actually communicating anything through his music, and so I feared that listening to their first two albums I might see a hint of that even back then.

Fortunately, it isn't.  Pinkerton is still a force of nature, and their songs were still inventive, rather than the formula-written soft-riff/loud-riff sound they've settled on.  The album still sounds unsettled, with tempo changes and chord changes that don't always work 100%, but that adds to the sense that this was new to them.  They were struggling to make a great record, rather than settling for a mediocre one.  I'm not surprised few people bought it, but I am constantly surprised that people buy their new crap.