|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the images of Rivers Cuomo through the years in the liner notes of Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo sum up the variations in Cuomo’s musical career. There’s the young Rivers sitting on his bed appearing dazed as though he woke up with guitar in hand, and the heavy metal Rivers on stage coated in sweat, with hair flowing down to his stomach. Then there’s the goofy Rivers that the world would meet in 1994, wearing thick rimmed glasses and looking the complete antithesis of a rock star, and full-bearded Pinkerton style Rivers playing a clarinet. Bizarre emo glam rock Rivers is here, wearing leggings (?!?) and eye shadow. Finally, there’s the scholarly yet still out of place Rivers, fitted with cap and gown and displaying his Harvard diploma. It’s only fitting, as this is the man who penned unforgettable classics like “Say It Ain’t So” and “Across the Sea”, but then disposable hits such as “Hash Pipe”, “Dope Nose” (cheese tastes so good on a burnt piece of lamb!), and “Beverly Hills”.
Alone will come as a shock to the casual Weezer fan, but it verifies what die hards have known for years: there is much more to Rivers Cuomo than the three chord power pop songs of Weezer. Those type of songs are certainly on this album, but there are plenty of tracks that would seem completely out of place on a Weezer record, from the “Our Prayer”-esque opening track “Ooh” to the sparse heartfelt ballad “Wanda (You’re My Only Love)” and the barbershop quartet style “Dude, We’re Finally Landing”. Some of these tracks underlie the intense frustrations of Weezer fans over the years: While the band has put out three straight mediocore-to-bad albums, some of Cuomo’s finest and most interesting recordings remain buried. The Songs from the Black Hole demos, an abandoned rock opera in space that eventually evolved into 1996’s Pinkerton, have become some of the most sought after recordings in modern music. Thankfully, a few of those tracks made it onto this record, as well as a collection of songs that provide insight into the mind of an equally brilliant and frustrating pop musician.
The early years are highlighted on this collection by a heavy rocking Blue Album era song, “Lemonade”, and two bizarre covers, “The World We Love So Much” (Gregg Alexander) and “The Bomb” (Ice Cube). In the Alexander cover, Cuomo sings softly over an acoustic guitar, and then begins howling and screaming, his voice unrestrained and scratchy. “White people shouldn’t try to be funky was the underlying belief” writes Cuomo in the liner notes for “The Bomb”, then explains that he loved rap music and wanted to give it a try. At least unlike “Beverly Hills”, this recording was not meant to be taken seriously. There is one song on the record that made it onto a Weezer album: “Buddy Holly”. Listening to this early demo really raises the question of how necessary the other members of Weezer really even are when it comes to the recording process. All of the parts are worked out, from the drums to the bass. Clearly the song was pretty well fleshed out before the band even went into the studio. Perhaps this could also help in debunking the myth that former bassist Matt Sharp was the true reason for the high quality of the first two albums. However, this album also shows that what Cuomo really needs is someone to tell him what is good and what is bad; perhaps Sharp was that person.
The centerpiece of the album is undoubtedly the Songs from the Black Hole tracks. Like Cuomo transitioning from a simple life to the life of a rock star, the main character of the musical (Jonas) meets his future with excitement and fear in “Blast Off!”, a song featuring four crew aboard the ‘Betsy II’ spaceship. In these demos, Cuomo sings all of the parts, but had the album been completed the idea was for Cuomo to play the main character Jonas, guitarist Brian Bell and bassist Matt Sharp the rambunctious Wuan and Dondo, current band webmaster Karl Koch the robot M1, Rachel Hayden the ‘good girl’ character Laurel, and Joan Wasser the ‘bad girl’ Maria. The only released example of the album as it could have been is the Pinkerton b-side “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams”, which features Rachel Hayden and Cuomo dueting as Laurel and Jonas. “Blast Off!” transitions immediately into “Who You Callin’ Bitch?”, a brief and incredibly over-the-top interlude depicting an angry encounter between Jonas and Maria. “Dude, We’re Finally Landing” is another brief interlude as Wuan and Dondo give Jonas the news that the ship is landing. The three part a capella beginning of the song suggests, like “Who You Callin’ Bitch?”, a theatrical influence that could have resulted in a sophomore album that was even more shocking a deviation from Weezer’s debut than Pinkerton became. The final Black Hole track is “Superfriend”, a long awaited release that became somewhat of a holy grail for Weezer fans when the song could be heard in a brief rehearsal clip on the Video Capture Device DVD. The quirky and heartfelt duet between Jonas and Laurel could have fit in with Cuomo’s best Pinkerton era material.
Alone also reveals some insight into the massive gap in Weezer history that was the hiatus between Pinkerton and The Green Album. “Lover in the Snow” (1997) and “Crazy One” (1998) both demonstrate that Cuomo had yet to have whatever revelation caused him to churn out the bland and uninspiring music of 2001, as both songs are well-written and heartfelt. “Crazy One”, a heavy and simplistic rocker about Cuomo’s failure with a woman in L.A. (isn’t this the same situation that all his best songs come from?) may be the best song on this album. The closing track is “I Was Made for You”, a Make Believe demo that would have fit the record better than many of the songs on it. It has a pretty melody, but like most of the material from that album, suffers from over simplified generic lyrics that by their universality leave the listener completely disconnected.
This record offers a very interesting glimpse into Cuomo’s past, but obviously the next question is “What about the future?” Unfortunately, the only possible glimpse of the future this record offers is the epic disaster “This is the Way”, a demo from this year where Cuomo seems to completely abandon all of the song writing skills he possesses, creating a piece of pop trash that would not be out of place on a Hoobastank album. With no melody, a terrible drum machine backing, and a bland R&B vibe, Cuomo pens cringe-worthy lyrics such as “Cuz you’re the air I breathe / And you’re the heaven high up above” and continues a childlike use of rhyming that mysteriously appeared in Make Believe, rhyming “pushover” with “over” and “The world is still turning / But you are not learning”. The track offers a possible glimpse of the final nail in the coffin containing Weezer’s musical relevancy. The good news is that Cuomo admits in the liner notes that he intentionally was aiming for a “straight-ahead, nothing-fancy, middle-of-the-road, urban pop type of song” (but why?), and that the song will not be on the sixth Weezer record. The bad news is that apparently the rest of the band thought it was an awesome song, especially bassist Scott Shriner who pushed for the song: “I want to sing that song. I can own it.” So again the idea is raised that maybe Cuomo would be better off without his band mates; maybe a presence is indeed needed to help act as a filter for Cuomo’s massive catalog of songs.
As horrifying as Weezer’s fall may be to fans of the band’s first two albums, Alone reminds that Rivers Cuomo did not get into music to be a great artist. The Kiss-obsessed teenager simply wanted to become a rock star. “I Wish You Had an Axe Guitar” is a brief recording from 1984 of Cuomo and some childhood band mates apparently looking at a picture of Kiss as Rivers explains why the band needs ax guitars and big hair. Songs like “Buddy Holly” and “Undone” were recorded to be hits, but in the process Cuomo penned an endearing and long-lasting album. He has often reflected on Pinkerton as one of his biggest musical failures, when in fact it may be his greatest contribution to art, and calls “Beverly Hills”, which will be forgotten by history, one of his “greatest musical achievements”. Perhaps Weezer will surprise in a positive way with their sixth album, or maybe the downward spiral will continue, but whatever the case, Alone is a refreshing release from an artist who has been consistently disappointing for the better part of a decade.
-12/18/07