In the Garage, I Belong

WEEZER
Weezer (the Blue Album)
Geffen, 1994

It is my certain opinion that the 1990s witnessed the closest thing to a golden generation in rock music since the pioneering era of 1965-75. In the 1990s “modern soul” and “R&B”, the evil descendants of the disco era and 1980s synth-pop, still ruled MTV and the unrepresentative rankings of the Billboard Hot 100. But this period also witnessed the rise of several new schools of rock, both radical (in the case of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth and Pavement) and revivalist (Green Day and the subject of this piece, Weezer), all of which were rather unhelpfully grouped under the term “alternative rock”.

While my fellow reviewer has chosen to highlight how a recent Pearl Jam album pales in comparison to their early 90s work, I would like to return to 1995 and Weezer (known popularly as The Blue Album), the funny, melodic and endearing album that will surely be remembered as one of the finest rock/pop works of the decade.

Weezer is an album that shows impressive simplicity: Rivers Cuomo writes terrific melodies that are so immediate and hooks that are so catchy that he deserves to be held alongside such 70s power-pop writers as Alex Chilton (Big Star), Douglas Colvin and John Cummings (The Ramones) and Howard Devoto (Buzzcocks). The most obvious point of comparison is, however, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day; as contemporaries and musical rivals they could be compared to Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain. Just like Vedder with Cobain, Cuomo is a better lyricist (not surprising from a Harvard College literature graduate), far superior tunesmith and a better guitarist as well (like Green Day, Weezer show an affection for the three-chord song but they have greater variety and complexity). And unlike Green Day (and indeed, nearly every band of the alt-rock era), they sing songs that reflect not the cynicism and antigovernment frustrations of a disillusioned American youth but songs that reflect their personal experiences. This is once again where they can be compared to Pearl Jam, and this is one of their greatest strengths.

The greatest thing about this album though is its consistency. There may be only ten songs, but there isn’t a bad one in the bunch. If forced to choose with a gun to my head, I’d say that the three singles (“Buddy Holly”, “Undone (The Sweater Song)” and “Say it Ain’t So”) stand out. But on repeated listens, “My Name is Jonas”, “In the Garage” and “Surf Wax America” are just as memorable and likable. “No One Else” has perhaps the album’s funniest lyric, about Rivers Cuomo in one of his jealous moods: fittingly he includes a song, “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here”, about the consequences of his jealousy. He shows the capacity to laugh at himself, and shares with us his most intimate thoughts and memories, sung not despairingly but lovingly. While the album did receive both critical and commercial success (included in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 all-time greatest albums), it’s a great shame that it never became the iconic moment that Green Day’s Dookie did. It is a situation that reminds me once again of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and is unfortunate testament to the underappreciation of the album that is the best value-for-money of any musical work of the 1990s.

-Keshava Guha