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Ooh

Monday, September 1, 2008

Recorded in the fall of 1992, this 47-second nugget didn’t see the light of day until the very end of 2007, on Rivers Cuomo’s solo demo compendium Alone. It is the sole a capella Cuomo song to see official release.

The song, despite its obvious lack of lyrics or riffs, has its very own number in Cuomo’s Catalogue of Riffs spreadsheet, timestamping it to a period of creativity that produced more than a third of The Blue Album. Cuomo notes — in his commentary on this song in the Alone booklet — that it was around this time that he began to watch more live classical performances, and “resolved to incorporate the more complex arrangements and countermelodies of classical music in [his] rock songs.” He recorded this piece as a warm-up exercise — which he admits to being a “rip-off of Smetana’s Moldau,” the actual title of which is Vltava (Cuomo was referring to it by its German title, Die Moltau). In contrast to “Ooh,” Vltava is a full 12-minute symphony from 1874 that uses “tone painting,” a technique that evokes the literal meaning of a song by way of purely musical effects. That would be another contrast – “Ooh” lacks lyrics, or any programmatic claim to meaning at all – though Cuomo would use this same technique during the “dream sequence” of “Dreamin’,” well over a decade later.

In any event, “Ooh” is pretty easy to pick out of Vltava: just listen.

Filed in Alone, The Grand Playlist | | Comments (15)

Peace

Sunday, August 24, 2008

At the time of its 2005 release, “Peace” was perhaps the most thematically thoughtful song Weezer had put on an album in the near-decade since Pinkerton. A lot of that has to do with Cuomo’s refrain — “I need to find some peace” — which refers to Cuomo’s then-nascent experiences with Vispasanna meditation. The acoustic guitar in the verse seems to represent that for which Cuomo longs, while the jagged riff that cuts through it might be harsh reality decimating Cuomo’s attempts to block it all out (a theme he’d revisit in more overwrought terms come 2008’s “Dreamin'”). The wordless wails that follow the chorus speak to that pain the most clearly, while the serene outro of strummed acoustics, Pat Wilson’s consoling beat, and Scott Shriner’s delicate bass figures indicate Cuomo’s achievement of that peace, even as he continues to chase it. (The song clearly meant something to him, .)

Granted, as with any Make Believe recording, the downright sterile mix does sap some of the song’s power (although “Peace” less so than many other songs on the album). Likewise, Cuomo lets slip some lyrical blunders: the infamous “there is no way I can stop / my poor brain is gonna pop” line sucks indeed, and nearly all of the lines ring overly general for what appears to be a very personal song. But there is some redemption in more esoteric lines: “Counting all the flowers / Waste the precious hours,” “I don’t have a purpose / Scattered on the surface,” and “All the broken tethers / We can bring together” aren’t any endorsement for Cuomo’s poetic prowess, but they’re well suited to the song’s meaning and soundscape.

Emotional vocal performances from Cuomo post-Pinkerton are few and far between (only one apiece comes to mind from The Green Album and Maladroit: “O Girlfriend” and “Death and Destruction,” respectively), and this one works pretty well. Props are also due that great solo, which arcs beautifully above those of Green‘s formulaic redundancy and Maladroit‘s directionless shredding.

The band did a decent job of conveying the song’s power live, and Cuomo’s repeatedly earnest vocal performance proves that this song did indeed mean something to him (further evidence: it originally closed Make Believe). The 5/10/05 performance at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia is probably best, as Brian Bell throws in a cool extra trick or two with the final “whoa-oh” harmonies, and a bit of angsty feedback on the second verse.

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Why Bother?

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Like Hamlet is a young man’s play, Pinkerton is a young man’s album. Surely anyone can appreciate either (and at any age), but there’s a very hormonal, angsty, testosterone-motivated facet to both (at their respective cores, even), and at least in Pinkerton‘s case, that the vast majority of its acolytes are male and discovered it during their teens is probably no coincidence.

While there’s an obvious ability to relate to the record’s juvenile themes at that age, I think Pinkerton also serves as an inspiration for that crowd. Musically speaking, it is by far Rivers Cuomo’s greatest work, and the emotional intellect behind the arrangements of songs like “Across the Sea” and “Falling For You” represent some of the very best pop songwriting and performance since the 1960s. And when you’re young, your body’s not the only thing in its prime — so are your hopes and dreams. Whether you’re a musician or not, Pinkerton, for all its candid ugliness as a text, can serve as a model for the kind of technical achievement to which one might aspire (especially for a demographic self-selectively likely to aspire toward achievement in rock terms).

Conversely, “Why Bother?” is probably the album’s worst case for musical accomplishment. There’s not much to it, a fast blast of 120-second rock, during which time there’s indeed a stellar solo and some nifty vocal counterpoint – but it’s a pretty standard power-pop, power-chord arrangement that offers little in the way of, say, “Falling For You’s” hall-of-fame key change. Instead, it’s probably the best example of why Pinkerton is, so to speak, a young man’s play:

I know I should get next to you
You got a look that made me think you’re cool
But it’s just sexual attraction
Not something real, so I’d rather keep whacking

In the span of this first verse alone, we get not only a very phallocentric reference to masturbation, but also some schoolyard language that indicates a temporal and spatial setting (“get next to you,” like the seating arrangement in a classroom; the jejune compliment-threat of the past tense “made me think you’re cool”), and, on an even more psychologically telling level, the impulse to reject someone before they inevitably reject you.

In some ways, though, this is a young love anti-anthem for all. “This happened to me twice before” flaunts its inexperience, and the reference to getting one’s heart broken “next summer” evokes a characteristically high school-college frame of mind. Should a young girl elect to suffer its paranoid misogyny, she can make “Why Bother?” her own.

The band surprisingly pulled out an acoustic version for their 2008 AOL Sessions, albeit with guitarist Brian Bell on lead vocals, drummer Pat Wilson on guitar, bassist Scott Shriner on bass, and Cuomo on drums — a lineup that contains exactly zero constants from the way the band recorded it in 1996. It feels a bit like a cover band, especially when Bell changes the infamous “whacking” line to “You’d better start packing.” Bell claims he did so to better relate to the song, as he would rather tell a girl to leave and find a new one than simply masturbate (cool, Brian), but it’s a complete misread of a song about wanting someone you can’t have, not leaving someone you can.

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High Up Above

Friday, August 22, 2008

This song was one of the earliest sketches for Maladroit, and the third song Cuomo wrote in 2001 (the first being Green b-side “I Do”).

We have two versions, the first recorded for the BBC (one of the four songs from that session the station would air) on 6/13/01. It is distinguished by its prominent use of organ, and the presence of Weezer’s second bassist, Mikey Welsh (who would have to spend some time in rehab by the end of the summer; the band replaced him with Scott Shriner in time for fall touring and recordings, swiftly and without remorse). By that time, the song would be translated to the guitar, but in those months before Welsh’s exit, the band would play the song on European stages with the organ intact (a rare instance of Cuomo playing keys live).

On the BBC version, the organ lends the song its warm heart, pleasantly coalescing with Brian Bell’s guitar chords and Pat Wilson’s lone hi-hat. It’s a nice backdrop for Cuomo’s contemplative first verse and chorus. In the former, he ruminates being left behind by a girl (her “fair face” quite like the “fine face” of the second person in Green‘s “Smile”); in the latter, he sings, “I really miss your love / When you’re high up above / And I am waiting here / Alone and by myself.” A simple sentiment, an obvious rhyme — 13 songs after “High Up Above,” Cuomo would write “Diamond Rings,” another tune that uses the cliched love/above rhyme in its chorus — but at this point, immediately post-Green, it must have been encouraging to hear Cuomo sing with a bit of feeling in his voice. The build from there is a little predictable, and the post-chorus shredding that Bell indulges not once but twice (in the span of 2 minute song) is a little much, predicting what would prove one of Maladroit‘s biggest pitfalls. But it’s a nice performance of a passable song, even if the repetition of the non-line “will agree” over the outro is a jarring instance of laziness even in an era of Cuomo songwriting defined by it.

By the time the band attempted it for the official Maladroit sessions that December, the organ had been obliterated, the tempo raised, with some pretty nice background vocals doing the “just a little bit out-of-sync” thing added, a la “Waiting On You.” The superfluous shredfest remains, as does the damnable “will agree,” but this time the band graces the song with a real outro (not a fadeout), Wilson doing some nifty fills and Cuomo pulling it together for an agreeable “whoa-oh” outro. The BBC version is still best, simply because the instrumentation gives the song its individual mood, whereas by December it had become another faceless outtake. The solo on the BBC version is much nicer, and clearer, to boot.

This song doesn’t sound like Maladroit to me, but rather an Early Album 5-style demo. Some have made the insight that Early A5 is essentially just Maladroit songwriting plus pianos and keyboards, so maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise…But either way, the observation’s a fine one: the little guitar lick that ends every phrase of the 12/18 version of “High Up Above” is identical to that which ends every phrase of the 4/22/02 version of EA5‘s “The Victor.”

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Diamond Rings

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Back in 2005, on the eve of Make Believe‘s release, guitarist Brian Bell remarked that the record’s second track, “Perfect Situation,” sounded like “Green Plus” to him. He was right — I can hear some traces of Green in “Situation” (namely its reuse of the opening bars from “Simple Pages,” more or less verbatim), and it’s a little more thoroughly arranged and lively than the majority of that album — but I think the term could also apply to “Diamond Rings.”

For one, the timing is right — Weezer performed it in December of 2001, in support of Green‘s release earlier that year (although Scott Shriner had already replaced that album’s bassist, Mikey Welsh), so it makes sense he was still playing with the album’s central formula. The COR reveals that it was written somewhat shortly after Green b-side “I Do,” although in-between that song and this one, Cuomo appeared to already be deep into the songwriting for Maladroit (having already churned out “December” and “Burndt Jamb“). It’s maybe a shame this song was never released, as it would have been an obvious bridge between Green and Maladroit, and, conveniently, a fine first track (Cuomo may have thought so at one point, as well: The Red Album‘s inferior opener, “Troublemaker,” seems to revisit the “Diamond Rings” riff).

The song’s lyrics are a relic of both eras’ recyclable mad libs: the bridge has the same “take control” imperative as the Maladroit song of the same name (written just nine songs before “Diamond Rings”), and the second verse references “digging [Cuomo’s] sound,” as does Maladroit‘s “Fall Together” (Green‘s “Simple Pages” also references “[Cuomo’s] sound,” the digging thereof left implicit). There’s also a repeated appeal to “let me go,” a familiar inersion inversion of Green‘s opening “Don’t Let Go.”

We only have a semi-official audience bootleg of that late 2001 performance, but the Recording History indicates “Diamond Rings” was attempted for the earliest Maladroit sessions, at the August/September 2001 SnS Demos, then attempted over a dozen times during the Steak House/Cello demos later that year. It was also played at the fabled HBO Reverb show, under Weezer’s alter ego name, Goat Punishment, but was sadly not one of the songs that made the official broadcast. November 2001’s demo sequence of the album even had “Diamond Rings” as track 7. But by the time of March 2002’s Early Album 5 demos (which in fact predated Maladroit‘s release), the song had been forgotten.

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In The Garage

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

 

The great “In The Garage” is a rare entry in the all-too-shortlist of Weezer songs with harmonica, which also includes the esteemed likes of “Mykel & Carli,” “Pig,” “Wanda (You’re My Only Love),” “My Name Is Jonas” and “Freak Me Out” (one of these is not quite like the others). The mouth organ riff that begins the song is nicely accompanied by a pretty finger-picked acoustic – a classic Weezer touch, like the heavy electric guitars of the driving verse. The chorus is pure melody, its lyrics offering a more universal counterpoint to the verse’s personal childhood references: “In the garage, I feel safe / No one cares about my ways / In the garage, where I belong / No one hears me sing this song.”

The song brims with subtle moments of brilliance. The way that, on the second verse, everything drops out but Cuomo’s voice, Matt Sharp’s bass, and Pat Wilson’s simple drumbeat,the guitars crashing back in on the “and” of the fourth beat with a great big cymbal crash, and Brian Bell’s backup harmonies. The strange little scream that Cuomo lets out before tearing into the solo — perhaps the weirdest and most narratively compelling solo of Weezer’s entire discography (the beginning of the solo is Cuomo picking up the guitar for the first time, just making noise; playing around a little longer, he’s able to make some cool, flashy sounds; and finally, it ends with a graceful passage that fits the song and moment perfectly, as though as a player he has gradually honed not just skill but taste). The vocals rising up on the outro — the cute, perfectly cheesy repetition of “no one hears me!” — and the return of the harmonica for the final chords.

Notable variations: in 1994, the band did a couple great live acoustic versions for FM radio (wherein that wild guitar solo is actually played on the harmonica!). As late as their most recent tour in 2005, they’ve been playing the song live — which, being one of Cuomo’s earliest and most personal gems, inexplicably featured late-period bassist Scott Shriner on lead vocals. The band also did a version for their all-killer MTV All Access set in 2001, which also featured a new bassist (Mikey Welsh), but sensibly left the lead to Cuomo. Lastly, there’s a brief clip of Cuomo playing the “Garage” melody on a harpsichord on the Video Capture Device DVD, which sounds quite nice.

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My Best Friend

Monday, August 18, 2008

Ask any of Weezer’s die-hard fans about “My Best Friend” and you’ll hear the sound of disdain. A survey of the comments on its SongMeanings entry, however, reveals plenty of love.

“This song is wonderful,” remarks jack_the_brat.

“this song always reminds me of 1 of my friends, shes not actually my best friend but i bloody wish she was!!!” exclaims xxrosiepxx.

“This song is about homosexuality,” relates Bill_Cowan.

“It’s about Rivers’ dog,” Fixxxer169 insists.

These people are all wrong, of course: it is not wonderful, it certainly isn’t an ode to homosexuality, and it’s hard to tell if Rivers even owns a dog. “My Best Friend” is, in truth, very arguably the weakest offering from what is very arguably Weezer’s weakest album. Against all odds, this does not mean “My Best Friend” is the worst song Weezer has ever released, because it isn’t — but it’s still plenty regrettable. It was seldom played on the Make Believe tour, and the band has scarcely mentioned it since.

It’s difficult to accept a 35-year-old Harvard English major starting a song with the lines, “When everything is wrong / I’ll come talk to you / You make things alright / When I’m feeling blue.” It’s downright shameful when the chorus of said song winds up being, “You’re my best friend / And I love you / And I love you / Yes I do.”

Musically, the song fares just slightly better. The guitar leads on the verse recall the production of The Green Album and somehow make you long for its airtight sound again; Brian’s aimless, half-buried backup vocals on the pre-chorus evoke Maladroit‘s flaws; and the mix epitomizes the bottom scrapings of Make Believe‘s dispiritingly thin barrel. In the band’s track-by-track notes on MB, Cuomo proudly remarks on the organ that he added to the song at the last minute, but hell if anyone noticed one before reading that. Presumably it’s the cacophonous thing geysering bile throughout the song’s intro, but it’s all such a hyper-compressed mess of sound that it just comes off like an indiscernible hemmorhage of pop-rock noise.

Cuomo apparently wrote the song for “some kind of ogre-ish guy [he] met,” and submitted the song to the Shrek 2 soundtrack. Hilariously enough, the folks at Dreamworks said it sounded *too much* like a Shrek song, and so it was rejected. Cuomo took the song back home, rewrote it to sound less “Shrek-ish” and “way better” (my sanity for the original), then released it on Make Believe. Brian Bell remarked that had it been released on Shrek 2, it would have been the first Weezer song anyone had heard in 3 years, which would have been the least flattering first glimpse possible for Weezer’s least flattering record.

On a mostly unrelated note, one of Pat Wilson’s comments on the song is especially indicative of a problem I think has really handicapped Weezer on Make Believe and all of their post-2000 albums: song selection. He remarks — presumably with a sarcastic, bitter grin on his face — “No one thought about [‘My Best Friend’] for the longest time, and the next thing I know, ‘We’re doing that song!'” Make Believe actually had a completely different tracklist just a month before its release; we can only wonder what songs like “Average Person” must have sounded like (or how anyone thought “Peace” could work as a closer), but thanks to the behind-the-scenes clip released with the album, we’ve heard brief bits and pieces of both “Love Is The Answer” and “You’re The One.” The former sounds like a song that starts pretty and has a huge buildup and release, while the latter sounds like upstroked, whammy-barred pop magic. Even if most bad Weezer songs could sound appealing from such brief excerpts, these two sound promising enough that I’m willing to bet they best most of MB as we know it (speak not of the Raditude “Love Is The Answer” to come). Here’s to hoping these finished outtakes eventually see release — imagine if we never heard the bonus tracks from the deluxe Red Album.

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You Won’t Get With Me Tonight

Thursday, August 14, 2008

This song is part of Songs From The Black Hole, a collection of songs that the band never finished. In the wake of The Blue Album‘s commercial breakout, Rivers Cuomo was disappointed to find that the mainstream had largely misunderstood the record, shocked to find the band had been misconstrued as a novelty act with a catchy sense of humor. Of course, this impression came from the singles: in the case of “Buddy Holly,” it’s understandable, considering the song’s goofy synth flourishes, happy-go-lucky melody, white-boy-gangsta lyrics and Happy Days-themed music video (replete with Fonz appearance!); in the case of “Undone — The Sweater Song,” the references to Superman underwear and the spoken-word Gen X slacker conversations that break up the verses blur the line as well. For the most part, it’s easy to see how the press and radio fans might have seen the Weezers as a gang of alt-rock jesters.

Cuomo was dismayed; he had poured his heart into songs like “In The Garage” and “Only In Dreams,” and even “Undone” and “Buddy Holly” were meant to betaken straight. Cuomo would soon have to get used to his catalog being misunderstood (as much his fault as anyone’s, in most cases), but at this point the misinterpretation stung. Cuomo endeavored to create a follow-up so ambitious as to obliterate any chance of being taken lightly, and the first draft he came up with was Black Hole. The idea was to create a rock opera in which Cuomo’s character leads a year-long space mission (ostensibly to save the planet Nomus from being swallowed by its sun), during which he squabbles with his crewmates, gets romantically involved with the two women of the mission, and winds up having a daughter. It was meant to serve as an allegory for Weezer’s trajectory toward (and ultimate realization of) fame and fortune. The songs were to be “transed together,” creating a seamless flow from track to track, a la the ending suite of Abbey Road or Dark Side of the Moon.

The planned story-tracklist had vocal parts written for protagonist Jonas (Cuomo), crewmates Wuan and Dondo (guitarist Brian Bell and bassist Matt Sharp, respectively), Laurel (Rachel Haden of the band That Dog), the mother of Jonas’ daughter, Maria (Joan Wasser of the Dambuilders, who at the time did not know Cuomo had written a part for her), and the mechanoid M-1 (Karl Koch, Weezer’s archivist). However, these songs were not recorded in any form other than Cuomo’s personal eight-track demos, so the recordings that have surfaced from the collection confusingly have Cuomo singing every character’s part.

By the time Cuomo enrolled at Harvard in 1995, he was beginning to have a change of heart about the concept. Some also credit then-bassist Matt Sharp with Cuomo’s loss of interest in the project, after Sharp heard the demos’ synth-heavy sound and swiped it for his sideproject’s debut album,  Return of the Rentals (this being in the early ’90s, when the analog synth was an out-of-vogue instrument in the grunge rock climate). Either way, the concept changed, and we wound up with Pinkerton in 1996.

It begs the quesion: would SFTBH been a better album than Pinkerton? It would have likely been even less commercial, and I don’t hear any songs from the batch we have that rival the quality of “Falling For You,” “Across the Sea.” “Butterfly,” or even “El Scorcho,” all songs we would not have gotten without the Pinkerton concept (except for “Longtime Sunshine,” which likely would have made SFTBH). That said, it’s unfair to judge a completed album against a collection of unfiinished demos. Pinkerton or no Pinkerton, it’s a shame these songs never got the full-studio, full-arrangement treatment they deserved, as many of them represent some of Cuomo’s most adventurous songwriting.

Finally: there are two demo tracklists for SFTBH, and “You Won’t Get With Me Tonight” is on both of them. It is a conversation between Jonas (Cuomo) and Maria (Cuomo; meant to be Wasser), which according to the album’s Wikipedia entry goes just so:

Maria really wants to hook up with Jonas but he only wants to be her friend, not her lover. He knows that she will use him for sex, not love. Jonas affirms his friendship with Maria though by telling her that he will protect her from Wuan and Dondó, making sure they won’t bother her any more

On Track List 2, the song is essentially split up into two new tracks, “Who You Callin’ Bitch?” and “Please Remember” – their titles are both derived from this song and they have similar lyrics. The full “You Won’t Get with Me Tonight” wasn’t completely dropped from the track lists though, instead being placed near the end. It’s unknown whether the Track List 2 version of “You Won’t Get with Me Tonight” would have had any lyrical changes to accommodate its new track placement at the end rather than at the beginning of the album/story.

The version we have is apparently from the first tracklist. According to the Recording History, it was either recorded around Christmas of 1994, or in Hamburg, Germany during the February of 1995. It was officially released on the Buddyhead compilation Gimme Skelter, which until the much later release of Alone III: The Pinkerton Demos would remain the only legal way to hear it. Per that compilation, “Get With Me” was the first song from the SFTBH demos to see official release of any kind.

It’s a winning little shot of pop rock that has harmonizing guitars and synthesizers on the solo, and a lyrical reference to “Getchoo,” which was eventually released on Pinkerton and first considered for SFTBH tracklist #1 (then spelled “Gitchoo”). As it is, it’s a fine jolt of lo-fi rock that doesn’t make much sense to casual ears (Cuomo singing both roles gets confusing) — but imagining the awesomeness this song would’ve brought with full-band, full-studio, full-Wasser treatment makes for a real shame.

It is alleged that Cuomo eventually abandoned the song after he realized the lead vocal melody bore some resemblance to the introductory guitar riff of “I Shot the Sheriff” — which makes zero sense at all, considering he has happily released songs that bear far more than a passing resemblance to George Benson’s “Breezin'” (cough), Billy Joel’s “Leningrad” (hmph), the diarrhea theme song of playground yore (ick), and the fucking Bagel Bites jingle (jeez), of all things.

Evidently, this song was played multiple times at soundchecks during Weezer’s 1995 tour with Teenage Fanclub. It has, however, never been performed live for an actual audience.

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Cryin’ And Lonely

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

This one is a Green Album-era rehearsal tune that was demoed by the band several times after their tour in the summer of 2000 — part of a collection of home recordings that are identified in the Recording History as the October Demos. It was attempted three times that month, then at the end of December in S.I.R. Studios in Los Angeles. Finally, it made the actual Green recordings, tracked on 12/28/00, but it apparently didn’t even make the professional mixing round of the album. It is one of the few official Green recordings that were never officially released.

How and when we got it, and which version we have, I’m not exactly sure. But it’s interesting that this song came so soon after Summer Songs 2000. That material was part of Cuomo’s efforts to make his songs less and less personal, beginning sometime around our last entry, 1997’s “Lover In The Snow.” “Cryin’ And Lonely” is arguably the ultimate realization of that process — it just surprises me that it took such a brief amount of time to get from “O Girl” to “Cryin’ And Lonely” (a matter of months), when “Lover In The Snow” to “O Girl” took three years.

Then again, considering that this one was written in the midst of a ton of Green album tracks and b-sides — in the COR, it is immediately preceded by “Don’t Let Go” and the unforgivably titled “Sugar Booger,” and doesn’t come too far before “Simple Pages” and “O Lisa” — maybe it’s not all that surprising. But even those relatively sterile songs brim with life when compared to “Cryin’ And Lonely.” There is some personal investment in the lyrics — the chorus of which goes, “And all the times we break up, the world could come to an end / I see the simple freedom in your eyes / But I won’t be there when you’re crying and lonely tonight” — but amid the rote Green Day schlock of the musical accompaniment, the words just never come to life. The solo is respectable enough (for Green), and Pat Wilson’s drumming on the final chorus is nice and lively, but aside from the little hook at the end of the chorus, there’s really not much to appreciate here. The band was wise to ax it.

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Lover In The Snow

Monday, August 11, 2008

I’m not sure how this song originally leaked, but by the time of its official release on Rivers Cuomo’s Alone demo compilation of 2007, “Lover In The Snow” was a familiar recording to Weezer die-hards. It’s a rare artifact from the Dark Ages of Weezer, the 1997-1999 period during which Cuomo quietly remodeled his craft after the fallout of Pinkerton; in fact, by my count this is one of just 10 stellar songs we have from the unbelievably inspired year of 1997 (we have just one from 1998, Alone‘s “Crazy One,” and then three from 1999: “New Joint,” “My Brain,” the “Island in the Sun” demo, plus “Always,” which was written in ’99, then recorded and released as a Green b-side in 2001). Weezer fans have long salivated at the prospect of the floodgates opening on this prolific and mysterious era.

Unexpectedly enough, this song is in fact a product of Cuomo’s post-Pinkerton anti-emotionalism. As Cuomo notes in the Alone booklet:

After [Pinkerton] came out, I started looking for a new, more minimalistic, less personal style. One of the first things I tried was fantasy-based songs — imagining a Romantic, flowery, tragic and/or mystical setting and then describing it with words and music.

It’s a little hard to believe, because “Lower In The Snow” seethes with angst and disappointment. Even Cuomo was surprised: “I was amazed that this song seemed to be just as powerful and emotional as my personal songs, even though it was all fantasy, an imagined experience that never happened.”

Most would be cautious to equate any of Weezer’s post-Pinkerton work with that fantastic album, but “Lover In The Snow” proves that Cuomo was still on fire a year later. The “Romantic minimalism” of the song is characterized by references to “the shady glen” and chivalrous kisses to the hand. The lyrics are complemented by the fittingly spare arrangement — little more than a thick, dirty electric guitar, a tambourine ‘n’ handclaps rhythm track, and Cuomo’s voice (lead and backups). In its design, both lyrical and musical, it is a one-of-a-kind entry in the Weezer canon, and one that is as successful as any of Cuomo’s previous work. As I posited in my own review of Alone, it’s Cuomo beating Spoon at their own game (and predicting their signature sound well before they found it themselves).

I love the image of “the lover in the snow” — such a simple turn of phrase that takes the familiar tale of being cheated on and makes it into something unique. “Lying with you / Down in the snow / Letting him do / All of the things that he wants to” — great lyrics (need I point out the double entendre in “lying?”) applied to a plainly beautiful melody. To quote Evan Sawdy’s review of Alone for PopMatters:

[It] works simply because [it] rides on the single most accessible melody that Cuomo has ever penned. Being so sparse and simple, it’s doubtful that it would ever have gotten play on mainstream rock radio, but as it stands, it absolutely cries out for consideration on the inevitable Best of Weezer compilation.

Funnily enough, this is an example of Cuomo detaching his emotions from his music — and yet it’s a polar opposite from his later attempts to do the same, like, say “Crab.” I suppose Cuomo figured that even a song like “Lover In The Snow” remained too quirky and different to be a hit single, and continued to hone himself out of his art for the next three years towards The Green Album.

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