Tuesday 25 November 2008

Andrew Lloyd Weezer


Weezer's Pinkerton is a brilliant album. Some people debate its preeminence, focusing their adulation instead upon the band's debut 'blue' album.

To them I say, 'I respectfully yet emphatically disagree with your point of view.'

Heck yes.

Falling For You (download mp3 via YouSendIt) is all about the guitar solo from 2.10, and the accompanying extra-matured-cheddar-cheesy sequence of key-changes, which could almost come from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

IN A GOOD WAY.

... All culminating in a lovely interrupted cadence (/key change) at 2.35 (translation: you were expecting triumphant and happy; it goes sad and wistful). The beauty is that these are such hackneyed musical motifs and devices. It's almost banal. But – crucially – not even slightly so in this context.

It mentions cellos, too, thereby notching up several bonus points.

Weren't Weezer so much better before they went compression-mad? Why the hell doesn't Rivers Cuomo write songs like this any more? Songs that teeter majestically on the upturned drawing-pin balanced on the hairline division between irony and intense self-revelation.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahh, so very true sir. Pinkerton was one of my favourites when I was in sixth form. It definitely stands apart from all other Weezer albums -- every little quirk and imperfection is just where it needs to be, all their other albums are too polished. But most importantly, the songwriting is at its best on Pinkerton.

Also, "Across the Sea" was pretty much my anthem for long-distance relationship angst. Ahh, so much of my past now seems faintly absurd.

Rebecca said...

they also mention a cello in 'El Scorcho' too ... and better still, they rhyme it with 'jello' - here meaning, I believe, an abbreviation of jealous. As opposed to a brand of gelatin-free gelling agent. I do believe, however, that they could have made either of the above work.

Tom Parnell said...

Ah, Across the Sea. Brilliant, brilliant song.

And yes, Rebecca ... Cellos aplenty in Pinkerton. A theme, dare we posit?

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