Continuing my review of Weezer's discography, we come across the musical storm cloud that is 'Pinkerton'. Released in 1996, it was written following Cuomo's scrapping of Weezer's planned follow up to the mega-successful 'Blue album'. Instead of the expected 'Songs from the Black Hole' project, the public was instead greeted with an angsty, depressed and haunting album which precisely nobody had expected - or wanted, it seems. The album was met with immediate disdain from critics and audiences alike, with 'Rolling stone' readers voting it as the third worst album of the year. Nowadays it's seen by many as one of the best albums of the 90s (It has a perfect 100 on metacritic, which may be dubious but does say something about how opinion has changed.), and possibly even better than the 'Blue album'.
As a Weezer fan going into 'Pinkerton' for the first time you may have the same reaction as the '96 audience did; I certainly did. The opening track 'Tired of Sex' has heavily distorted, disturbing guitars and lyrics which are alternatively whimpered and screamed and are basically about Cuomo's sexual experiences with fans. Funnily enough, this - along with second track 'Getchoo' - are by far the heaviest sounding on the album as well as the heaviest Weezer have ever been. It's easy to imagine how many disillusioned fans turned the album off after track 2, amazed at how their favourite power-pop, fun guitar group had suddenly nose-dived into a creepy, depressing band.
The lyrics are creepy on 'Pinkerton', no doubt about it, but this only adds to the piece in my eyes. The songs were written by Cuomo about his experiences at Harvard University across 1995 and '96 where he was older than most students and had a large leg brace due to surgery he had undergone, making him a social outcast. The perverted lyrics of a song like 'Across the sea' therefore come across as more depressing than creepy, because Cuomo knows that they're terrible but can't help himself due to how alone he is.
The first half of the album is for the most part darker than the second, with 'No other one' tackling a mediocre girlfriend and 'Why bother' showing off Cuomo's lack of will to even try and get into a relationship due to ho much he knows it's gonna kill him in the end, before 'Across the sea' tackles loneliness in the bluntest possible way. When Cuomo wails 'Why are you so far away from me?' it feels almost too real to listen to.
The second half lightens up a bit, with 'The good life' and 'El Scorcho' being the most upbeat songs on the record - that's not to say they don't have their creepy lyrics ("God-damn you half Japanese girls!") - and 'Falling for you' appears to actually have a happy ending. The two exceptions to this are 'Pink triangle', a tune about falling for a lesbian that's the musical equivalent of a tut, and the closing track 'Butterfly' which manages to be the saddest Weezer song to this day despite also being one of the softest. By comparing himself to the character of Pinkerton from the play Madame Butterfly Cuomo creates an honest and heartbreaking summary of the previous 34 minutes.
I realise that I've not mentioned the rest of the band for any part of this review, because it's such a personal album, but they all do great jobs with complex work from Brian Bell on guitar, Matt sharp on bass and Patrick Wilson on drums.
Nonetheless, what makes this album so important are the lyrical barriers it broke and that it gives us an unbelievably detailed look into the mind of a man on the brink of collapse and does it with catchy melodies and solid riffs. Maybe it deserves that 100 after all.
10/10
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