the world has turned and left me here

pinkerton

By now you've probably heard of this band called Weezer, "the guys who did that Happy Days video" or the "H*** Pipe dudes, yeah, man!" Or maybe you know them through sundry other channels like the "guys who consistently make lame music videos to pretty good songs," the Sweater Song singers, the Say-It-Ain't-So young budding alcoholics. But I'm here to tell you that, if any of the above applies, you may be completely in the dark about the best album that Weezer ever cut.

Now don't get me wrong, Blue Album fans, that thing was tight as all get out, and it is only after some calm and prayerful deliberation that I decided their Sophomore album narrowly beats out the Blue.

The album I'm referring to is, of course, Pinkerton.

And, the way things like this go sometimes, it was kind of a flop in terms of commercial success. Certainly nothing like the Blue, or the Green, with its radio-ready 28 minutes. As of this writing Maladroit is poised to surpass it in sales. But Pinkerton had a slow burn. The radio stations discarded the thing soon after El Scorcho hit the airwaves (perhaps because it didn't sound "produced" enough, and we wouldn't want to subvert Big Brother, now would we?), though the jury was still out with Weezer fans. And many Weez fans did the same, turning their back on the band because it didn't deliver a Blue sequel. Still, some came back to it and found a different (but equally good) album. Others discovered it for the first time way after its release, as I did in college, with only a dim memory of that crazy hang loose El Scorcho sound guiding me.

And on Pinkerton I found more where that came from. It's frayed at the edges. The guys don't sing in tight harmony; rather, they shout and scream and make silly noises, because music isn't always about restraint. It can be about lack of restraint too, and you'll also pick out this theme if you listen to the lyrics. If you want to get silly, it's here: Pink Triangle talks about the big whoops of falling for a lesbian:

Or if you 're in need of a good cry, listen to the last track, Butterfly:

If you're bitter about that downer of a last relationship you had, old man Rivers knows you're pain. He prescribes Why Bother. Then there's the opener with the unlikely name Tired of Sex, for all the playas in the house who are tired of playin'. Need motivation? Have a little of The Good Life. Rivers wrote it after being crippled for months after an operation, which prevented him from doing all those Weezer-like things he wanted to do.

As with all Weezer discs, there are some rock songs, namely Getchoo and Falling For You. They're not as personal as the other stuff on Pinkerton but are still way more so than any track off the Green Album or Maladroit.

If this weren't enough, you throw in the fact that Rivers had been studying creative writing at Harvard on the proceeds from the Blue album, and you can understand Pinkerton on a totally different level. There are all kinds of parallels between Pinkerton and Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly" if you're willing to listen for them. For instance, the last words of the album are

the first two lines of which are Captain Pinkerton's words to his Japanese bride Cio-Cio San, whom he later forsakes. When you first start to pick up the thread it's eery. Gave me the shivers.

But, if commercial failure weren't enough to malign this gem, we have Rivers' own denial of Pinkerton. After the fact he really regretted laying so many things bare, so much so that he wouldn't play Pinkerton songs in concert, even when Weez fans finally started warming up to it. The embittered Rivers once described the album as "getting really drunk at a party and telling everyone your darkest secrets and then waking up the next morning, hung over as hell and regretting it." Weezer plays more Pinkerton in concert now than they did before but it's still way underrepresented in my opinion.

If I haven't piqued your curiousity yet I probably won't. Maybe someone else could do a better job than I. At any rate, don't settle for the Green Album, Maladroit, or even the Blue (yes I know what tenuous strands of blasphemy I tread upon), but go out and get Pinkerton. They're all Weezer, but Pinkerton is Weezer unleashed, sloppy and happy and a little cynical at times, but genuine Weezer nonetheless.