Albums by this artist

Make Believe (2005)

Maladroit (2002)

The Green Album (Recommended) (2001)

Pinkerton (1996)

Weezer

Pinkerton

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» MARK T.R. DONOHUE | STAFF WRITER

Weezer Pinkerton Geffen, 1996 RiYL: Cheap Trick, The Get Up Kids, Pixies

I remember when the advance single for Weezer's "El Scorcho" arrived at my high school radio station. At the time the song seemed like a deliberate torpedo to the bow of the band's platinum hitmaker status. It starts off with a gurgling noise, the first line is "God damn you half-Japanese girls" delivered with gusto, and the third (and final) chord doesn't arrive until quite a ways in. I didn't buy my own copy of Pinkerton until I was in college. A lot of people who bought and loved Weezer's self-titled fist album didn't buy it at all.

While a cursory listen to the cryptically titled and packaged sophomore Weezer indicates a less melodic, more caustic, and way less teen-friendly band, there was far more going on than any of us realized at the time. Despite selling an order of magnitude fewer copies than any other Weezer record, Pinkerton remains the album most beloved by fans and most imitated by the scores of Weezer clones working their ways up in local music scenes nationwide.

Sometimes I feel almost as if the Weezer of Pinkerton is a different band; there's the goofy, lovable, Muppet-hugging MTV Weezer of the other albums, and then there's the feedback-crazed misanthropes who made this classic record. Plenty of introverted rock stars have tried to sabotage their fame with deliberately uncommercial recordings, from Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music to Nick Lowe's "Bay City Rollers We Love You" single. But few besides Weezer's Rivers Cuomo have ever been perceptive enough to know what would really scare away the kiddies is saying what they really thought.

Pinkerton is a relentlessly dark album. The nerd songwriter from the debut's "In The Garage" grows up, gets everything he ever wanted, and is miserable for it. "Tired Of Sex" disgustedly dismisses the groupie lifestyle, while "Why Bother?" declares love and relationships a total waste of time. Cuomo's few positive moments are delivered so as to make it clear he's being unrealistically idealistic ("Across The Sea") or poisonously satirical ("El Scorcho"). The album's deliberately unpolished sound (the Pixies' Surfer Rosa was clearly a huge influence) and songs that often center around crude two-chord riffs belie the overall sophistication of Cuomo's message.

The genius of Pinkerton is that for however unflattering a self-portrait Cuomo paints, by the acoustic closer "Butterfly." he's completely won us over. This final song, in addition to being really pretty, is in many ways the key to Pinkerton's psychology. Cuomo sings of catching a butterfly as a boy, attracted by its beauty, but crushing it in his big hands. What Rivers is saying here is despite all the trappings of fame he hasn't advance one bit -- he's still a clumsy child, chasing after the pretty things in life with no idea as to the consequences his involvement will have.

On the first album and most of what's come since Pinkerton, Cuomo has reverted to the child's point of view to win our sympathy and pity. Here, he sings as an adult, and despite the ugliness of the message, Rivers' undeniable honesty has reached a substantial cult that realizes it's the man's greatest work.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.