Pinkerton

Of course, I have known that Weezer's "Blue Album" was missing in Dimery's book for quite some time. It's the most blatant omission in the whole original list, as the global score for this iconic debut in the users' selection of LPs proves (highest global score as of today). 5/5 album all the way. But why the hell did I believe that Dimery and co. had included the American band's sophomore album in their list instead??? I have even just recently wrote that in a message to my chum Émile (also a user of this generator), and I was... totally wrong. Yet I could have taken an oath I had seen *Pinkerton* in those 1080+ albums... Looks like my faulty memory had just made up the whole thing. In a sense, this false recollection is fitting to the contents of Weezer's second album. Indeed, most of the songs in *Pinkerton* seem to be told from the perspective of a quite unreliable narrator -- some sort of alienated loner, lost inside his own fantasy world and identifying with that character from Puccini's *Madame Butterfly*, whose colonial male gaze here inspire the thoughts of a nerdy rock star that looks quite close to Rivers Cuomo's own persona. Frustration and self-denial thus loom over a lot of those melodic, indie-rock songs, and even a seemingly "sweet" tune such as "Across The Sea" is carrying some sinister undertones. There's indeed something a little disturbing in that story of a rock star replying to the letter of a foreign teenage fan in ways that could raise a couple of eyebrows today. And also back then, come to think of it. A friend of mine even pointed this out to me not so long ago : Pinkerton is a cool album, and it indeed paved the way to the emo scene about to surge in the decade that followed its release ; but in a way, this LP also foretells... the incel-adjacent corners of today's internet! And this part doesn't sound so good... Maybe that's what a lot of rock critics found unsavory at the time, without them being able to use those words back then. There sure are dark undercurrents troubling the stellar songwriting channeled throughout this striking record. And whether you can fully enjoy them or not, those undercurrents are part of the album's legacy. Let's be clear now: in spite of those elements (or maybe also *because* of them, even if it's a little unsettling to think so), *Pinkerton* remains Weezer's last great album to this day. Because there is an unhinged intensity in it that still manages to push indie-rock fans' buttons almost thirty years later. Plus, the music is fantastic: indeed, "Tired of Sex" does not only turn the masturbatory innuendoes of previous album's closer "Only In Dreams" on their heads -- like, yeah, now that you're a rock star, Rivers, you can have sex with all those groupies and even complain about it (unless those groupies are figments of your sick imagination again?)... That opener is also mostly an incredible lesson in tension-and-release dynamics perfectly illustrating the lyrical contents here, with that humongous, bouncy riff to push and pull you indefinitely. Then, "Getchoo" is a raucous number sending you to alt-rock heavens, "Why Bother"'s chorus offers a sing-along only equalled by the best cuts of the "blue album" itself, and "El Scorcho" is a sleazy tour de force where the band explores looser aesthetics while never softening their saturated edge. As for the rest, it is excellent nineties alt-rock fare with pop overtones. The unrequited love yarn "Pink Triangle" comes to mind here -- with its displaying of cis-heterosexual prejudiced thoughts on what lesbians and straight girls are supposed to look like being both exemplified and mocked here. Sometimes, it's just difficult to distinguish a ridiculous song from a great one with a ridiculous subject matter. That sort of thing happens a couple of times in this LP. But to me, those cuts are great songs, and only the 100% self-indulgent and pathetic moanings on the "confessional", barebones acoustic closer "Butterfly" sound bad on a purely musical level, really -- but given how that closer wraps up the themes displayed elsewhere in the record, it's still an apt conclusion no matter what. I remember hating that track at the time. Now I understand it was a way for Cuomo to signal us he had reached the bottom as a person -- even if not exactly as an artist -- and that he direly needed some time off to rethink his life, loves, and relationships to others. Hence the four-year hiatus that would follow. Nothing would ever be the same after that. Weezer would never record such intense compositions again, and Cuomo is probably a happier person and artist for it. But good lord, I still love this album! Because rarely have disturbingly candid rock songs sounded so catchy and fun to listen to. One for the ages, almost on an equal footing to Weezer's debut. 4.5/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums, rounded up to 5 9.5/10 for more general purposes: 5 + 4.5 Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ----- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 47 (including the one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 58 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 110 --- Hey, Émile. J'ai enfin trouvé le temps de répondre ! Regarde sous la review de *Young, Loud And Snotty* des Dead Boys !

The 'Blue Album' party is over and the sleazy reality of being a rock star has set in – wanton sex, unwanted attention, exhaustion, and a dash of creepy desire to finish it all off. This is probably my favorite Weezer LP (out of the two good ones they've released) for how categorically inverse it stands to the unadulterated joy of the Blue Album. Though panned at the time, the LP offers a textbook example of how to destroy the sophomore slump, especially in such a transformative way. The instrumentals are top-notch (artfully messy when they need to be, locked in when it's time to focus), the melodic songwriting improved over the high standard of Blue, and the lyricism perfectly fitted to invoke a questioning eyebrow-raise as Cuomo sings about his 18-year-old crush. Think a lot of people miss the point of how this album is a send-up of the exhausted, over-idolized 90s' rock star (Rivers himself said " [it's] a portrait of the worst version of myself") and meant to be nigh-satire throughout. It's the earliest version of the tongue-in-cheek attitude that would come to destroy the band's later output in a wave of cheesiness after Matt Sharp took his guitar lines and left, but it works here even at such a large dose. Great add, this LP is always such a fun, sickening listen and really stands without equal subject-wise in my opinion.