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New Joint

Friday, August 28, 2009

This outcast tune’s Green-era provenance is written all over its plain jane face: doggedly strophic structure, a simple (but catchy) vocal melody, a guitar solo that does little else than to reprise that melody, and lyrics that seem to be about not much of anything at all. I’ve always considered “New Joint” roughly equivalent to “Cryin’ and Lonely,” and not just ’cause they both leaked at the same time.

There’s really nothing interesting to say about this one, other than the fact that, like many other tunes from this assembly line period of Rivers Cuomo composition, it seems to recycle familiar elements from its contemporaries: for one, it’s really easy to sing the “He’s trippin’! / Mental slippin’!” part of “My Brain” over this song’s “now, now” bridge.

Also, like so many other tunes from this era, there seems to be a semblance of potential (however modest) here that simply goes unrealized, for fear of doing anything too interesting for mainstream consumerism (although ironically, much of the Weezer material from around the turn of the century is too unremarkable even for pop radio tastes). This rehearsal clip (skip to 5:44) shows Cuomo teaching the tune to the rest of the band, and, shorn of the dull production and monontonous arrangement that reins in the “finished version,” the melody here seems to appreciate when given a little bit of dynamic and room to breathe. Still, as a written song that potential is quite limited (lyrics like “Hey / Get off my back / What’s up with you / Ridin’ my crack?” can’t go very far), and even with some better calls in the studio, this song could’ve been “pretty good” at best.

Oh, and it’s perhaps vaguely interesting that in an earlier form, this song used to be called “Roommate.” I think the lyric that refers to catching someone eating Cuomo’s snacks is a holdover from that iteration of the song, even if it makes jack shit for sense in the context of the rewrite.


Filed in Demos | | Comments (28)

The Organ Player

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Billy Joel has always had a surprisingly strong influence on Rivers Cuomo, at least as far as this side of the new millennium is concerned. There’s the matter of Joel’s “Leningrad,” the introductory piano figure of which Cuomo shamelessly cribbed for the main melody line of 2001 b-side “I Do” — a surprisingly nice listen, if you can ignore the outright theft at play. Then there’s Make Believe closer “Haunt You Every Day,” which Cuomo wrote in response to producer Rick Rubin’s prompt to write a song like Billy Joel would. But I think Mr. Joel’s influence is most clearly felt — and beneficially employed — in this 2002 outtake, “The Organ Player.” (Get it?)

There are two versions of this song, and I will begin by discussing the first (and better) of the two. When this song was posted to weezer.com as part of the band’s ongoing efforts to share unfinished work with the fans (a trend that began with the Maladroit sessions and was continuing through summer of 2002, with the band’s early and abortive efforts at making their fifth album), it must have been quite the treat. Of the couple dozen songs the band scorched through on 7/2/02, “The Organ Player” is the uncontested victor: of the lot, only the faux-reggae leanings of “Hey Domingo” and the gently contemplative “Lullabye” compare; forgettable turds like the revised “Superstar” and “Booby Trap” pale laughably.

“The Organ Player,” to be sure, didn’t only stand out for its songwriting quality, but also for its surprisingly unique and successful arrangement. With a gentle tom roll, Pat Wilson escorts into a calming soundscape colored by a warmly bittersweet electric guitar and a comfortable bed of Rhodes-flavored keys. It’s immediately welcoming, and soothes the listener into being ready to take in one of the most experimental Cuomo lyrics ever recorded:

The people come and lay down on the ground
They want to hear all the beautiful sounds
Of the organ player
But in the crowd, there’s a bitter young man
He can’t accept what the other ones can
That the song is greater than him

I call it “experimental” because it’s a decidedly third-person narrative in a catalog of songs that are, both at their honest best (“Across the Sea“) and most gratingly facetious (“The Girl Got Hot”), thoroughly first-person affairs. Of course, it could just be a storytelling technique — the “bitter young man” could be Cuomo himself, at a younger age — but either way, it’s wonderfully effective. The lyrics are simple, direct, poetic, and carried by a melody that immediately resonates. There’s an intriguing sense of drama and conflict here — the cynic versus the music — and it quickly engages the listener’s imagnation. What happens next?

The song shifts into a brief interlude wherein Cuomo describes the venomous young man’s presence (while some wonderful Brian Bell “ahhh” backups float by like grey clouds), then continues more directly with the verse narrative, comparing that same venom to “arrows of flame” and identifying the source of the young man’s bitterness as being a sort of inner turmoil separate from the music. The interlude figure returns as Cuomo compares his disposition to “Casting necromancer’s spells, summoning demons from hell,” but appends a delicately building bridge: “The tones rise up,” he sings, as do those of the organ keyboard in his own song. “And spill his cup / He can’t defeat this tune.”

Gorgeously, the song breaks into an airy, lightly reverbed guitar solo that sounds as though it’s soaring up through the pink sunset sky above the concert — one of the most effetively understated guitar solos of Cuomo’s career.

Another verse, and the melodies rise
A perfect tune doesn’t need a disguise
‘Cause there is no fighting
And nature says what is high and is low
Father Time will reveal what is shown
As the bitter man is falling
To his knees

Through a soaring mantra of the line, “On his knees,” the song arrives at its conclusion and the imaginary concert ends triumphantly. It’s a great and unique entry into the Weezer canon, and one that seems to be regrettably overlooked by both the band and its fans.

Not helping its case for longevity, I suppose, is the 7/16/02 cut the band made two weeks later. The amps are tastelessly cranked up in volume and gain, which has an unfortunate domino effect: Wilson’s nuanced drums are dumbed down and loudened up to compete with the guitars, and worse yet, Cuomo’s key vocals are obscured in the mire. Equally problematic is the fact that the keyboards — once representative of the organ — are either completely obliterated in the mix, or else weren’t even played at all (hence the thickening of the guitars). Head-scratcher moves abound, making this a take truly worth forgetting at best, a reminder that this band truly knows how to butcher a great song at worst.

Either way, in celebration of the proper cut, it’s worth noting that while the Early Album 5 sessions were wisely scrapped forever, this song was a true winner and should’ve been held over for the eventual Make Believe like its contemporary “Perfect Situation” was. Failing that, this is the kind of experimentation I wish the band would pursue more often, especially on decidedly “experimental” outings such as The Red Album…But in any case, it’s a good memento from an otherwise largely disposable session, and proof that true gems exist in all eras of this band’s long and mysterious life.

Filed in Early Album 5, The Very Best | | Comments (39)

The Spider

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

I’m often accused of hyperbole on this here songblog, and I will concede that these claims aren’t always inaccurate. But this is one grand statement I can truly stand by: “The Spider” is the most misunderstood song Weezer has ever released.

As the third of four “Deluxe version” bonus tracks for 2008’s Red Album, “The Spider” follows on the heels of “Standard” album closer “The Angel and The One,” “Miss Sweeney,” and “Pig” — a pointed string of what are arguably the best Weezer songs officially released since the ’90s, and tough company to keep for any song Rivers Cuomo has written and bothered to share this century. Many die-hard fans (and who else went for the Deluxe?) have dismissed this track as an out-and-out failure, a waste of space and something that was wisely kept off the main album. But I write today to maintain that “The Spider” deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the other three truly great Red-era tracks that precede it.

It begins uniquely for a Weezer song, with a lone acoustic guitar adorned by several sheets of blanketed synth drones. Sharp listeners will notice a little turn in the arpeggiating line that recalls the way the acoustic guitar from “Butterfly” reaches out for something that isn’t there. As with “Pig” before it, Cuomo’s lyric ponders mortality via personification of an inhuman living thing — in this case, the titular insect. Spiders have inspired relatively experimental Cuomo compositions before — preceding album Make Believe’s sole left fielder, “Freak Me Out,” and as-yet-unheard pre-Weezer sketch “Spiderbitch” — but “The Spider” stands out for being further evidence that The Red Album could have pretty easily been a very satisfying and mature commentary on the graying years of life. (Instead of its reality, a rather facile collection of half-realized songs and alleged “Weezer” “music” such as “Cold Dark World.”)

Following “Angel” and “Pig” — two songs that, despite their unconventional structures, retain fairly immediate and obvious intentions — it’s all too easy to characterize “The Spider’s” dense text and infinite space as being formless and unrefined. After all, both of those prior songs climax quite spectacularly, whereas “The Spider” simmers on a single verse for the vast majority of its 4:42 runtime; once the vocals enter, they only pause once, and then very briefly. They are, in their entirety before that pause:

There’s a spider in the drain and he’s feeling pain
And he doesn’t want to die any more than you or I
He’s struggling to live, but he doesn’t have much time
Any more than you or I…
We’ve got to die, we’ve got to live
We’ve got to take what we can get
We sell ourselves for petty change
And when we die, we rearrange…
It’s time to take it back again
It’s time to take it back again
I want you to love me like I love you…

Here, Cuomo is setting the template for the main thoughts and themes of this rather complicated song: the spider metaphor, the life-meets-death dialectic, and a rather obtuse dimension of love. It’s clearly directionless, but there’s a method to the madness that hasn’t yet revealed itself — again, Cuomo’s just beginning to fray things out here. It’s fantastically disorienting, and it’s disheartening to see so many mistaken that facet of the song as having been unintentional. The musical context should provide a hint for what’s going on here: those guitar meanderings and synth percolations give the song an expansive spatial sense encountered nowhere else in Weezer’s tightly-knit and often formulaic canon, and that’s no coincidence. It’s almost as if this nebulous tune is floating off in some alternate Weezer reality, or at least somewhere dark and far beyond the shallow stratosphere of their sunny and insular guitar pop world.

The break in these lyrics comes in the form of another first: a nearly single-note feedback solo that cuts gently across the synth bed before echoing violently back into silence. (Aside: The last time a guitar’s entrance has had such an effect in a Weezer song would be “I Do,” and I think it’s much more effective here.) It’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to hear it as the drip of the faucet expanding into a full flow, the one that spells the spider’s imminent end. The lyrics return:

There’s nothing more for me to say
I spoke my piece; I go on my way
And fare thee well, where’er you go
You might need help, but I won’t know
‘Cause I’m up here in my own cell
It could be heaven; it could be hell
We’ll never know just who we are
Because when we die, we become a star
And stars can’t talk because they have no mouths to speak about their past
They simply shine up in the sky
And give their light to you and I…

By this point in the verse, one has invariably noticed that the volume and density of the synths has steadily risen to the point where they are actually beginning to obscure the lyrics a bit. And speaking of the lyrics, what’s going on here now? Cuomo’s clearly flailing: he says he’s got nothing left to say, then continues to ramble on — getting all Romantic-Shakespeare-Middle-English on us for a second, even — and then all this talk about heaven and hell and death and stars — which is a pretty nice little move ‘cause the song sounds cold and otherworldly enough to be sung from outerspace, as I was sort of mentioning a second ago — but what? Hell, I have to embark on a ramble just to even begin scratching the surface of Cuomo’s!

This is the moment where so many — even some of the most helplessly devout in the camp of Weezer diehards — have given up on this song. What’s he talking about? Why are those synths getting so damn loud and annoying? Fuck this, give me back my “Beverly Hills!”
Well, kids, pay close attention:

And where will we be without their light?
We call out names and then start a fight
But then again, that’s what we do
I hate me and I hate you too
‘Cause I’m in pain just like the spider
In the drain, I am afire
But I can’t win, I’ve got to lose
Give me strength to see me through
And ease the pain that I must feel
As my bones break and I taste the steel
As I go down…the drain
I’m insane

Get it? Did you see that, there?

Okay, well, to be fair, you really have to be taking the song’s lyrics in as a {whole} to understand what’s going on at each and every point in its runtime. But those paying close attention should be realizing any number of things at this point, such as:

1)   The waves of synthesizer drowning out Cuomo are meant to represent the water flow drowning the spider. It’s a clever little way of representing what’s going on in the song without making it lyrically explicit until the winding verse’s prolonged conclusion.  You’d think this would be obvious upon first listen, but perhaps Cuomo’s overestimated his audience here as he did with Pinkerton: I’ve been surprised by how many times I’ve had to explain this simple device of “The Spider” to people who have had plenty of time to contemplate it.

2)   That first realization is key to understanding a very crucial facet of this song: the lyrics are *intentionally* frantic and scatterbrained. Cuomo’s mind is all over the place because he — like a spider nervously realizing that things are starting to get a bit wet — sees the end approaching. “The end” here means a number of things: the end of a life, the end of a relationship, the end of a song — the end of a chance to communicate something to someone. That’s what this song is about, and the hurried and ineloquent way Cuomo tries to get it all out before the approaching deadline is a subtle way to reinforce that meaning. Weezer has used conversational ineloquence to great effect plenty of times before (“I’m ready, let’s do it baby!”), so this is hardly a new trick.

3)   The lyrics at first appear to have little semblance of structure or purpose, but the narrative arc here is actually rather impressive: We begin below ground with the spider in the drain, holding onto hope against hope in its final moments, and from there Cuomo takes us up to more human ground level with the talk of failing relationships, and from there up into the stars with the talk of the afterlife…and then back down to earth with the return of the failing relationship, and then deeper down with the return to the drain where the spider finally submits to his fate. No matter how you label it, the motion is pretty interesting: Death –> Life –> Afterlife –> Life –> Death, or Hell –> Earth –> Heaven –> Earth –> Hell, etc.  It’s a perfect curve, and it works far too well for anyone to tenably dismiss this song as “directionless,” as so many have tried.

I made a sidelong reference to it earlier, but something I also really enjoy about this song is the sort of Romantic, classic-lit imagery that Cuomo evokes a couple of times. There’s the “fare thee well, where’er you go” line, of course, but my favorite moment in the whole song is when Cuomo shouts, “As my bones break and I taste the steel!” — an awesome evocation of both the spider getting crushed along the contours of the drain, and the end of the relationship being like the end of an old-fashioned duel, Cuomo left gutted by the blade of his ex-lover (all figuratively, of course). So while the winding verse and melody may have otherwise bored with its only subtle variations and developments, there are more than enough moments like these to keep the listener moved and engaged: another favorite of mine is when Brian Bell doubles in with the backing vocals on “I hate me and I hate you too,” just the right moment for a little bit of dramatic harmony. A nice reminder that these two’s voices sure do go nice together…

I will admit to one substantial issue I take with this song, and that is the thudding conclusion: “I’m insane.” It’s not that it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the song — in fact, it’s a knowing acknowledgment of the rest of the lyrics’ fraught thought process — it’s just more that it’s such a predictable Cuomo cliché in a song that is otherwise entrenched in deeply novel territory for him as a writer and Weezer as a band. Maybe it’s not such an issue with other listeners (I’d be interested to hear your thoughts), but the first time I heard this song and it had me in such a spell, I heard the “down the drain” line and found myself begging Cuomo not to rhyme it with “brain” or “insane”…and of course, there it went. It’s certainly forgivable, seeing how I otherwise love this song so dearly, but it’s something I feel warrants mention.

Frankly, I’m astounded that the Rivers Cuomo of today wrote this song, and that the Weezer of today found a way to record it well and release it in some form or another. But then again, with “Angel,” “Pig” and “Sweeney” all also being released in this era, perhaps the surprise should be reserved for the fact that all but one of these songs got jilted to “bonus track” status. Other tantalizing glimpses into Cuomo’s songwriting from this period, like “I Don’t Want To Let You Go,” frustrate as much as they please: if the guy’s still so capable of writing stuff that can go toe-to-toe with the brilliant pop manna he was conjuring as a young adult, why is he so afraid to acknowledge it through a more public medium? (Say, Weezer’s actual albums?) I’m glad that we get this stuff at all (it’s why I’m still doing this thing, folks), but it makes it kind of obvious that there’s probably a bit more of it that we aren’t hearing. Those close to the band (and occasionally, in it) have suggested as much many a time.

Meanwhile, we can hope that someday we will hear all the gems and pleasant oddities left untouched in the =W= vault. Moreover, we can give Cuomo a little more credit as a songwriter, and music like “The Spider” a little more thought as songs: there’s far more than meets the eye here, and it merits should be considered, discussed, celebrated. If not, we can expect many more spontaneously hot girls and creepy daddies in our near future.

Filed in Bonus Tracks, The Red Album, The Very Best | | Comments (94)

Slob

Sunday, July 12, 2009

“Slob” has had a pretty interesting life, for a Weezer song. The tune was debuted during the Summer Songs 2000 tour, which found it sticking out in the memory of fans as a rare slab of raw emotion in a batch of Rivers Cuomo’s least personal songs to date. Truth be told, the semi-officially released live cut of the song definitely has something to it: the dissonant guitar lick quickly sets the atmosphere, which is quickly deepened by Cuomo’s impassioned vocals and despondent lyrics. The wayward guitar leads that set up the chorus are a nice touch, as are those Mikey Welsh bass lurches that accompany the driving second verse. The solo nicely encapsulates the lost feeling Cuomo’s trying to convey, and the way his guitar continues to build through the final chorus really brings the point home.

Lyrically, the song is simple but effective: “Leave me alone / I won’t pick up the phone / And I won’t listen to messages / Sent by someone who calls up and says / ‘I don’t like how you’re living your life / Get yourself a wife / Get yourself a job / You’re living a dream / Don’t you be a slob.'” The second verse allusion to Cuomo rebelliously “drinking some of grandaddy’s beer” is the one truly naff lyric in the set, as it doesn’t sound legitimate coming from a man approaching his thirties — but for the most part, this is the most direct and heartfelt expression of the SS2K‘s primary lyrical theme, Cuomo’s unraveling health and mental state post-Pinkerton flop. It’s hardly my personal favorite from the set, but it’s definitely a highlight.

Like all but one of the SS2K, “Slob” got snubbed when it came time to select the Green Album contenders. But the song saw a revival when Cuomo began listening to the fans during the Maladroit writing and recording sessions, many of whom were adamant about the song getting a second treatment. Surprisingly, Cuomo listened and the song wound up being re-recorded and made the cut for the final record — perhaps he thought it fit in with the more  pop metal sound he was ostensibly going for with much of that record.

For whatever reason, the Mala “Slob” doesn’t carry quite the same weight the earlier live version does. Cuomo’s vocal production —  glazed in a weird, misplaced reverb — certainly doesn’t help. Otherwise, the two versions are largly similar, and each band member does a commendable job of getting the point across…Perhaps the studio rendition simply highlights the song’s limited potential, whereas the live setting implied that unpursued development may have lead to something greater. Still, musically speaking, the two versions are roughly interchangable, with a subtle but very discernible edge going to the SS2K. A possible compromise might be the January 10th early studio version of the song that lacks the regrettable vocal mixing, but sounds just about as unfinished as the 2000 live take (and also features some chorus counterpoint from Scott Shriner that I don’t particularly fancy). Whatever — personal preference.

I have a couple live bootleg versions from some Japan dates in May ’02, which offer their own subtle variations (more emphatic drumming from Pat Wilson, I’d say) and are perfectly serviceable. I’m not sure which era it comes from — ’00 or ’02 — but there’s a live version that was tagged onto the 2nd iteration of the UK Retail single of Mala single “Keep Fishin’,” which isn’t quite special enough to merit an official release…though come to think of it, I like the diction of the solo probably the best of the lot, Wilson’s drumming is spot on, the backup vocals are as good as any other take, and I quite like the little noodling that’s added on as an adhoc intro. So seeing as I’m now deciding this is my favorite version of the song, perhaps it actually was worth releasing. Thinking aloud, here.

At this point in time, I don’t quite think there’s enough here to merit an addition to the Grand Playlist — it just misses the mark. Though I’m curious as to what all you fine readers have to say about this one — especially which version you find best.

Filed in Live B-Sides, Maladroit, Summer Songs 2000 | | Comments (64)

Little Sister

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Just after I finish singing the praises of Rivers Cuomo’s 1997 output comes probably the least impressive song from that year: “Little Sister.”

While unknown demo or rehearsal recordings of the song may exist, the only public airing it ever received was at a Rivers Cuomo solo show at T.T. the Bear’s in Boston, October of 1997. And interestingly enough, Cuomo himself taped a very pristine bootleg of the evening on his DAT recorder — later sharing this song (and also “1000 Years”) from the show to fans directly via the brief period of time he spent living on Weezer fan forums in ’01/’02. It’s a bit of a shame that Cuomo selected this song to be one of just two he shared from the setlist — I would have MUCH rather gotten a lovely recording of “Rosemary,” “Baby,” “Fun Time,” or even the version of “Say It Ain’t So” they did over this one. But beggars can’t be choosers, and at the very least, we got a recording of a Cuomo tune we’d have probably never heard otherwise.

And really, while some fans hate it, “Little Sister” isn’t all that bad — it just has a hard time keeping up with its ’97 company (or most any of Cuomo’s output from that decade). Indeed, it’s very much a product of Cuomo’s daring experimental bent from this period: there’s the faux-funk one-chord riff that powers pretty much the entire song (there’s two in the chorus), which is a hallmark of the strophic repetition he was beginning to practice post-Pinkerton. The drumbeat is almost danceable, but the bass refuses to do anything interesting, like the simple guitar melody that cycles through its three-note pattern to no particular gain. Even the vocal melody is a bit of a toss-off, though the words Cuomo is singing — while rather plainspoken and unartful — are a bit noteworthy:

“Little girl in the hotel / Little girl on the bus / I wanna sin in the darkness / But the sun shines on all of us,” goes one verse, and it’s pretty clear that he’s singing about the shy rockstar’s plight: wanting to take advantage of the groupies, but fearing what others might think. Cuomo’s even pretty upfront about it as he preambles to the crowd, “It’s about girls who follow me around and then write down information on the Internet…Information I would rather not have my mother read.” Surely he can’t be referring to this thing…

Anyhow, after plodding through a few non-thrilling verses/choruses, the band goes through the motions of a boring bridge build that feigns direction but winds up leading only back to the blunt chorus. It sounds a bit like the band learned it the day before, so maybe there’s a lacking confidence here that compromises the song — but all in all, this is one experiment that simply failed and was wisely trashed.

Filed in Live Only, Rivers Cuomo Band | | Comments (38)

Autumn in Jayne

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Hot on the heels of “Sheila Can Do (It)” comes another artifact from Rivers Cuomo’s unfinished 1997 sideproject, the Boston-based alt.country of Homie. While many of those songs were old demos and scrapped song ideas that Cuomo was repurposing, this one, “Autumn in Jayne” (a.k.a. “Autumn Jane,” a.k.a. “Autumn and Jane” — both of which I prefer as the title, but we’re going by what’s in the Catalogue of Riffs here), is one of the latest-written songs from the project, written in 1997 itself. Which, all things considered, was a damn fine year for Cuomo: there’s the catchy bathroom humor of the oddball “Fun Time,” to the atmospheric space rock of “1000 Years,” to the perfect pop minimalism of “Lover In The Snow,” to the epic masterpiece “Rosemary” and its corollary “Baby.” Considering Cuomo was coming out of a very focused period of writing for the Songs From the Black Hole/Pinkerton arc, by all counts ’97 seems like Cuomo’s most varied and adventurous year of songwriting since at least 1993 — and a year that is easily on par with any other in the young songwriter’s early streak of brilliance. (We surprisingly have the majority of songs Cuomo wrote in 1997 in some rough form or another, though song titles like “Ol’ Backwater,” “La Belle Dame” and “They Called Him Sunshine” sure make one pine for the rest!)

Well, you can count Cuomo’s continued experiments in southern sun-kissed pop as yet more successes from the fertile year of 1997. While less ambitious than many of the aforementioned songs, “Autumn in Jayne” is an absolute homerun at what it attempts. This is breezy, late-summer pop music that hints at the wistful, fading season ahead. The lyrics are simple, but more simply phrased than simple-minded:

I don’t remember what you said to me
Was it you would, or that you wouldn’t be?
I gave you my lovin’ in the spring time
From then until now is such a long time

And all the dirty boys on the street are looking for a new game
Would you leave me with the same?
And all the pretty girls gonna try and tie them down
It’s autumn in Jayne

Gettin’ to rock up in the dancehall
On Saturday nights we had a real ball
I was so proud to be your boyfriend
But now we lost what we had then

I see the leaves are catching fire
The birds are flying from their homes
And all around the world is crying
‘Cause now I can’t go back to autumn in Jayne

Repetition aside, that’s the lyrics in the entirety right there. Pretty nice, right? There’s not a whole lot to read into or analyze, but the poetic simplicity in lines like “I see the leaves are catching fire / The birds are flying from their homes” is heartwarming — there’s something classic in the design and narrative of the tune, something a la Tom Petty or somesuch. Which fits quite nicely into the little musical framework Cuomo’s worked out here, with the bright acoustic riffing, the rodeo 2s-and-4s beat that the drums kick in with, the drawling harmonica solos, the subtle organ chords and sweet harmonies that give the latter half of the song a subtle lift, not to mention the pleasantly circular motion of the structure itself.

One wonders how a song this simply good could get so easily lost to the sands of time (only played live twice! never released in any form!), but that might as well be the underlying leitmotif of the entire Weezer/Cuomo saga. We can only hope that justice is served and this song is released in some fine form or another (Rivers’ demo, the Homie rehearsal tapes, or both), but as with many of the tunes from this era, we will have Jack Mergist and Ryan Rowland’s wonderful tribute version to sate our imaginations in the meantime.

Filed in Homie, Live Only, The Very Best | | Comments (46)

So Low

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

While it’s hardly the lost classic a few Weezer die-hards have made it out to be, early Maladroit contender “So Low” is by all means a decent song, and one that’s held up better than a good portion of what actually wound up on the record.

Perhaps it’s the spacious live recording we have to judge it by (the band played it for an HBO Reverb special in a packed California club, the professional mix of which can’t hurt) — after all, “We Go Together” flourished during the same performance, but was quickly degraded into a generic throwaway when the band suffocated it in the studio. But as it stands, “So Low” is a punchy little brooder that channels some classic rock grooves on the chorus to get its point across. It’s a perfectly pleasant listen and nothing I would move to skip were it to come up in a shuffle.

The song comes in a brief stretch of songwriting inspiration — which also produced the superior “Faith in the Light” and “Broken Arrows” — and while this song is certainly friendlier than the standard Rivers Cuomo fare of the day (this little stretch was bookended by the likes of “Love Explosion” and “I Wanna Know”), I remain unconvinced that it transcends many of the typical Maladroit trappings. The song’s weighed down by some unimaginative backing vocals (like so many of the era), and while the lyrics have a general “love song” slant to them, ’01 Cuomo again favors stream-of-nonsenseness over complete thoughts and general cohesion. (“In your room / In your eyes / Silver spoon / Big surprise?”) Cuomo’s rather nice guitar solo opens things up for a moment, but it’s a brief respite from what is otherwise a pretty plodding, two-dimensional song. “So Low” establishes its intro/verse/chorus structure and sticks boringly to it from there on out.

All in all, it may not be on the order of “Possibilities” or “Change the World,” but I’d say it’s par for course with Maladroit‘s more middle-of-the-road affairs. Granted it’s worlds better than the detritus the band reworked it as (“Mansion of Cardboard,” an atrocity for another day), but when it comes to a road map for what Maladroit should have been, I’d much sooner pinpoint “Broken Arrows,” “We Go Together,” “Diamond Rings” et al.

Filed in Demos | | Comments (27)

Heart Songs

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Back in July of 2006, fans were preparing for yet another Weezer hiatus. In the second week of that month an article broke on MTV.com titled Rivers Cuomo Says Weezer Are ‘Done’ For Now — Again. Despite the frontman’s expressed reluctance to create another Weezer album, he admitted that he was still finding excitement in songwriting, and mentioned two recent works in particular — an autobiographical ode to his many musical influences titled “Heart Songs,” and an anthem for the men’s U.S. soccer team then called “Our Time Will Come.” He elaborated:

All this year, I’ve been feeling pretty creative and excited, so I’ve been writing a lot. I don’t know what’ll happen with these songs — if anything — I just sort of write them and I can’t stop. I certainly don’t see them becoming Weezer songs, and I don’t really see the point of a solo career. So we’ll just have to see.

While “Our Time Will Come” would later be finished as “My Day Is Coming” and released on Alone II — a demo series that more or less constitutes the solo career he then considered pointless — it’s more significant that at the time Cuomo felt “Heart Songs” was “certainly” not meant for Weezer. Significant because when he eventually changed his mind and rounded up the band to make 2008’s Red Album it would include “Heart Songs” — and because his first instinct was right.

It’s not often that I reference Mark Prindle here. While he is generally a rock critic (and comedian) par excellence, his lukewarm appraisal of both The Blue Album and Pinkerton suggests that he’s just not the type of person who would “get” Weezer — but truth be told, his frank judgments on their post-2000 work is usually pretty fair. And the words he spares for “Heart Songs” in his review of The Red Album bear repeating:

“Heart Songs” is the most embarrassing piece of musico-nostalgic schlock I’ve heard since The Righteous Brothers’ “Rock & Roll Heaven.” Go download it now. It includes lyrics like “Eddie Rabbitt sang about how much he loved a rainy night/Abba, Devo, Benatar were there the day John Lennon died.” All sung completely straight-faced. As many lackluster songs as this band has produced, none have ever been as all-encompassingly putrid as this one.

And really, that about sums it up for me. The 808 drum machine heartbeat, and the fake hi-hat rolls that start appearing shortly before the first chorus; the overproduced vocal embellishments (“Joan Baez!”) that cut through the verses, as well as the frustrating no man’s land Cuomo straddles there between lazy verse melody and straightup rap; the lyrical subject matter as well as Cuomo’s cringe-worthy wordplay, from “hippie songs could be heard in our pad” to the cheesy schlock overload of the chorus: it’s just all so scantly believable.

In my opinion, “Heart Songs” is the crux of The Red Album — it’s the moment that establishes the record as a failure. And although the straight-faced delivery of the song’s verse/chorus structure is absolutely reprehensible, you can pinpoint that precise moment of critical self-combustion on the bridge that follows, signalled when the acoustic pretense is dropped in favor of an unimaginatively dramatic palm-mute build. Acoustic moments are rare and cherishable in the world of Weezer, but an electric cliche like this one actually feels like something of a respite in context. That is, until you see where the lyrics are going:

Back in 1991
I wasn’t having any fun
‘Til my roommate said “Come on and put a brand new record on”
Had a baby on it
He was naked on it
Then I heard the chords that broke the chains I had upon me
Got together with my bros in some rehearsal studios
Then we played our first rock show and watched our fanbase start to grow
We signed a deal to get the dough to make a record of our own
Song come on the radio, now people go: “This is the song
These are my heart songs.”

…

See, The Red Album is full of ambiguity — little moments that indulge in what bored record critics often call “hip-hop braggadocio,” a la the ego-stroking “Troublemaker,” “Pork and Beans,” and the self-explanatory “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” (hint: Cuomo wrote it about himself). Coupled with the album’s cover image, Red came close to justifying itself as “art” in that it could be conceived as a concept album/game of “Are they serious?” smoke and mirrors (which is itself a precarious foundation for a piece of art, but is at least more interesting — and fun — than, say, Maladroit‘s hostile insubstantiality). The house of cards doesn’t fall down so much as spontaneously combust when this bridge drops, though: Weezer fans have long yearned to find moments this earnest and sincere in Cuomo’s post-2000 works, but it’s actually disgusting when that sincerity is so smug and delusional in its self-congratulation. Cuomo explicitly lords over “the singers in the other bands” and every other man who (/”that”) has ever lived, and that’s what makes this moment of crystallizing sincerity so offputting: as Prindle put it when discussing “Pork and Beans,” it “demonstrates Rivers’ inability to admit (or recognize?) that he is not ‘above’ writing happy songs with catchy choruses that sound designed for radio success; in fact, it’s all he fucking writes!!!”

And we haven’t even discussed how fucking literal this “Heart Songs” moment really is: singing like Cobain when referencing Cobain should be beneath the vocabulary of someone who was speaking with such musical and conceptual fluency as a young twentysomething; referring to Matt Sharp and Pat Wilson (even Jason Cropper) as “my bros” should be considered sacrilege on the level of Asher Roth (or simply poor taste); actually dropping the term “fanbase” in song and explaining how they were signed — again, scantly fucking believable. And the irony of giving a shout-out to the fans who got into this band via brilliant songs like “Undone” and “Say It Ain’t So” in a song that thoroughly shits on those fans (and those songs’ legacy) should not be missed, nor forgiven.

So yeah, suddenly the royal proclamations of “Greatest Man” and the defiant themes of “Troublemaker” and “Pork and Beans” (the three tracks on the album that preceded this one) don’t seem somewhat relatable or even funny anymore. It’s clear in “Heart Songs” that Cuomo’s got one inflated ego that, simply put, the last four albums of his career have utterly failed to sustain (in fact, one could say that Cuomo’s self-confidence has risen over the years, inversely proportional to the downward trajectory of his albums’ cohesion and, therefore, overall lasting quality). And the songs that come after suffer for it, too: the more outgoing moments of the otherwise static “Everybody Get Dangerous” and “Dreamin’” feel even more out of place than they would have, the mostly unredeemable suite of non-Rivers songs that follows is amplified as another symptom of how out of touch this band (and its ringleader) has become, and even “The Angel and the One” — an intensely personal and moving song that is probably the best piece of music to make it to a Weezer album’s final tracklisting since “Butterfly” — takes a serious blow simply for being the closer of such a ridiculously scizophrenic, aimless album (speaking of “Butterfly,” imagine it not as the closer to Pinkerton but rather having been tacked onto the end of Maladroit, and that’s about as much “The Angel” suffers here). Perhaps we should be glad that instant classics like “Miss Sweeney,” “The Spider” and “Pig” weren’t placed on The Red Album proper: we can appreciate them on their own separate merit, rather than have them sullied by sharing space with a song like this one.

As a bit of a postscript, I want to mention that this song’s obscured merits make the final product mess of it all that much more regretable. The acoustic design of the song is a welcomed change of pace from Weezer’s usual fare, it’s nice to hear Cuomo singing about something he really cares about (however misguidedly), Wilson’s tasteful handling of the skins and cymbals deserves props, the cellos on the chorus really are a sweet touch, and most of all, the musical build and release of the bridge into that final chorus — lush in harmony and strings — can send shivers down the spine when completely removed from its lyrical context. That the band was capable of taking all these wonderful inputs and creating quite possibly the worst song of their career with them is no small feat.

Filed in The Red Album, The Very Worst | | Comments (64)

Sheila Can Do (It)

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Interesting that this sunny little gem was one of just six songs Rivers Cuomo wrote in 1996 — especially when you consider what the other ones were. The song keeps impressive company, being written between two considerable pairs: “Across the Sea” with “The Good Life,” and “Falling For You” next to “Butterfly.” Indeed, that’s more or less the best work of the best Weezer album, and when taken in context, a quality pop jam the likes of “Sheila Can Do It” becomes a little underwhelming. It’s not quite the slouch of the sparingly focused year — that would be the song Cuomo wrote next, “Sunshine O” — but as a warm slice of late summer alt.country, it doesn’t quite fit in with the dead-of-December album Cuomo was finishing up with those four 1996 classics.

Cuomo knew as much, and “Sheila” would have to wait another year to get its public airing — come late ’97, by the time that everyone had given up on Pinkerton ever reaching the same commercial plateau as its predecessor had. That resignation push Cuomo into the deepening pit of depression and pop chart obsession that would develop for half a decade (before crystallizing into the radio success of The Green Album), but you’d have no idea judging by the stuff Cuomo was playing live with his band during his stay in Boston. Although these shows were simply billed as “Rivers Cuomo” shows — the title Rivers Cuomo Band was a fan designation that caught on and stuck over time — this was one of the songs Cuomo considered separate from the Weezer name, instead pegged for the playful Homie sideproject that he began to plan in his mind.

The Recording History notes two versions of this song, one being a solo Cuomo demo recorded at his Boston abode in September of 1997, and then a full band rehearsal tape from later that fall. We have neither, but instead bootlegs of both its public performances, in November of that year. Generally speaking, the tape we have of the 11/4 performance at the Middle East club makes it seem like it was a pretty magical evening, and “Sheila” is at the heart of that: Cuomo announces the title, and one of the girls upfront can be heard exclaiming, “That’s me!” Cuomo marvels good-naturedly at the coincidence, then cues drummer Fred Eltringham to play the intro roll. The song is actually one of the last Cuomo compositions to begin with the chorus for a very long time (“Dreamin’” is the first song on an album to start with the chorus since The Blue Album!), and its cheerful melody bends nicely to the shape of the carefree refrain, “Sheila can do it / I can do it / I don’t see the problem with that!” — one that seems to tickle the audience Sheila and her friends. (Can you hear laughter from the crowd just before the first verse, or am I just hearing things?) The nonmelodic verses are mouthed off with shouting enthusiasm and would probably be mislabeled as “rap” by bitching fans if it were placed on a Weezer record nowadays, but it serves as a nice contrast to the sing-songy chorus. And when Cuomo tears into that beautiful wordless bridge right after Kevin Stevenson’s rodeo guitar-wrangling solo, no one could ask for more melody: it’s such a pretty, anthemic rush of “la la la” perfection, and perhaps my very favorite moment in all the Homie songs.

The 11/21 version replaces the introductory chorus with a nice bit of harmonica whistlin’, and the dueling guitar solo burns the neck just a little bit redder, but it’s otherwise a pretty comparable performance. (Also notable because Cuomo begins by asking if the Sheila from the earlier show was there — she was.)

Regrettably, Cuomo seemed to have forgotten this song for a long time. When the Homie project dissolved in favor of a greater focus on Weezer’s comeback circa early 1998, this song seemed to disappear with it. The first time Cuomo’s mentioned it since wasn’t until July 24, 2008, when he briefly posted a list of his favorite home demos on his website — notable not only because it mentions a 1996 home demo of the song not mentioned in the Recording History, but also because it’s the only song out of 1996’s small (but considerable) crop to make the list. Either way, this is a good sign that we might hope someday to hear a recorded version of this song from Cuomo’s vaults, perhaps on a future Alone release.

In the meantime, just this past February superfans Jack Mergist and Ryan Rowland released an online-only album entitled HOMiE Vol. 1, a very well performed and recorded tribute to ten songs that were either Homie material or tunes Cuomo played live around the same time. The Mergist-sung version of “Sheila Can Do (It)” is arguably one of the fantastic album’s best, at once a faithful restoration of the bootleg versions while also a subtle and tasteful improvement: the vocal arrangement gets a healthy layer of meat added to the bone, and the new intro — which takes the bridge vocal melody and expands it into lush choral technicolor — is something that the Pet Sounds-worshiping Cuomo of the ’90s would have killed a man to pen. One still hopes that the best version imagined by that Cuomo gets to see the light of day sooner or later, but in the meantime, HOMiE’s brilliant substitute might be better than the real thing.

Filed in Homie, Live Only, The Grand Playlist | | Comments (42)

Devotion

Thursday, April 30, 2009

“Devotion” is, without question, the single most depressing song Rivers Cuomo has ever written.

That’s no small claim, especially considering the Pinkerton era from whence it came. The song is a b-side to the “El Scorcho” single and, like most Weezer b-sides, is fantastic: most all of the ones we’ve heard are as good if not better than the album they failed to make (perhaps excepting those of The Green Album; it’s also hard to tell with the Make Believe outtakes that have never been released, though brief clips suggest disproportionate excellence). But while the obviously superior quality of later Weezer b-sides to album tracks brings the band’s judgment into question (see “Miss Sweeney,” “Pig,” “Living Without You”), the Weezer of the ‘90s seemed to have a better grasp of what they were doing: tracks like “Susanne,” “Waiting On You” and “Mykel & Carli” can equal nearly any track on The Blue Album and Pinkerton, but trying to add or substitute them on to those records invariably ruins their delicate and near-perfect sequential flow.

“Devotion” is definitely among those great b-sides’ ranks, as it is not only the most depressing Cuomo composition in circulation, it is also one of his most subtle and brilliant. The tune begins with a volcanic eruption of midtempo guitars and drums, primarily driven by the forlorn organ figure that oozes down the center of the mix. While I most immediately sound with a heavy burden, I’ve also heard it described as “euphoric,” which isn’t entirely off base either. The emotion here is certainly a complex one, as the lyrics are soon to convey.

“Suddenly our shortcomings don’t seem to matter that much,” Cuomo begins, and for a moment it seems like this might be the meeting of a boy and girl whose personal halves have joined together, making a lovely and singular whole. But the way Cuomo dwells on these shortcomings for the remainder of the verse — the girl’s stupidity, his own physical imperfections — suggests that this isn’t quite the case.

That inkling is confirmed as Cuomo then expresses regret over having pushed this girl away, “waiting for Mrs. Right” — someone better. But the loving, harmonious admiration that begins the chorus makes it sound like everything’s okay now: “You never gave up devotion / Waiting for me / You’ll always be my girlfriend / I, too, waited for you / I’ll always be my…”

And then, that word: “Friend.”

Just like that, the imbalance in this relationship is solidified, and the happiness of the chorus makes the listener uneasy. This isn’t love, and Cuomo knows it: he lead on this poor girl, used her until he got bored, then tried to find someone that could truly capture his heart. This girl of his dreams — who he personifies as “Perfection” in the next verse — winds up cheating on him, and Cuomo, heartbroken, returns to this sadly devoted girl who pitifully embraces Cuomo once again. “You’ll always be my girlfriend” — Cuomo can always fall back on this girl. But she’ll always just be his friend: soon he’ll bore of her again, and break her heart once more.

This is the same kind of subtle abuse that lends emotional power to the thinly veiled misogyny of “No One Else.” They’re such resonant songs because of these insecurities, and just how honest Cuomo is about them: we come to despise the narrator of these songs (and with ‘90s Cuomo, we can be pretty sure that they are purely autobiographical), because the abuse is so deplorable. Perhaps the listener can relate because (s)he too has been the subject of this kind of “Devotion”-brand manipulation before, or even more uncomfortably, because the listener has manipulated and used someone else like this before. “No One Else” is a frighteningly jealous and controlling song once you crack its power pop exterior, but it’s a bit unnerving because pretty much any guy can relate to it one way or another: who wants his girlfriend to be out laughing at some other asshole’s jokes?

These songs pick and poke at the darkest of emotions that can develop in a relationship after its spiraled out of control, and “Devotion” is the most chilling portrait in the Weezer repertoire. The solo that enters with the key change definitely sounds distressed, like the product of the confused feelings and twisted perspectives that can consume a wayward lover whole. That’s just the thing: Cuomo’s joy here is so distorted and unhealthy and we fear it because we know what it means for the poor girl Devotion. There’s a brilliantly nuanced irony in the second verse, as well: Cuomo damns Perfection for “being untrue” and having “her own concerns,” when Cuomo did the exact same thing to the girl he’s running back to now. When Cuomo qualifies all his complaints about Perfection with an admiring “unlike you,” he might as well be singing “like me.”

I think there’s a special significance to the chorus line, “Devotion / Waiting for me” — perhaps an intentional tie-in to another Pinkerton contender/b-side, “Waiting On You,” a song that expresses Cuomo’s frustration over a girl who leaves him high and dry while looking for someone else (her own idea of Perfection). When these songs were in consideration for being on the same album (both songs originated during the Songs From The Black Hole concept), it’s possible that Cuomo was trying to make a point between the two songs — that the kind of pain he experiences in “Waiting On You” is the same kind of pain he makes Devotion endure, the girl that was Waiting On Him. Either way, it’s a neat connection that further deepens the emotions in each song.

This song was, to my knowledge, never properly played live, although a couple super-lucky fans reported hearing it at soundchecks during the Pinkerton tour. However, the song was performed at the Fingerprints Hootenanny jam with Cuomo and a roomful of jamming fans, and was one of the six songs to make it onto the EP snapshot of the evening, Not Alone. Listening to the performance elicits a reaction about as complex as the song’s lyrical subtleties themselves: on the one hand, the stripped down arrangement of “Devotion” bedded on fingersnaps and a brite-lite omnichord is immediately entrancing, and practically overflows with potential. Unfortunately, Cuomo’s lead vocal is shaky and tentative — being in the room as it happened must have been something magical, but in CD mastered sound, the flubbed notes and flaws are hard to miss. But that girl’s backing harmony is a pretty sweet touch, and it’s easy to appreciate the performance for what it is. Cuomo probably hadn’t thought of the song in at least a decade, and just to see this song getting an official live release in 2009 is something of a miracle in and of itself.

Filed in Not Alone, Songs From The Black Hole, Studio B-Sides, The Very Best | | Comments (77)