That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: Weezer Stops Trying
Irony can kill.
Anyone who saw Adaptation and walked out dissatisfied knows this feeling. The film is a brilliant pastiche of “tortured artist” narratives and underdog comedies, in which director Spike Jonze boldly inserts screenwriter Charlie Kaufman into the story and allows him to control it. The film’s creative coup occurs when Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage, cracks under studio pressure, and the entire movie morphs into a spot-on imitation of formulaic Hollywood shlock. Of course, the problem is that then you have to watch it; the overblown chase sequences and trite sentimentality of the film’s third act are accurately stale, but they do their job a little too well.
One wonders then, if this effect could have rubbed off on another of Jonze’s famed collaborators, Rivers Cuomo of the now-ubiquitous Weezer. While it’s been a long time since the two teamed up to produce the unassailably clever videos for “Buddy Holly” and “Undone (The Sweater Song),” the 2002 release of Adaptation came at just about the same time that Weezer dropped their head-banging, power chord-crunching, and thoroughly incomprehensible fourth album, Maladroit. And like Jonze’s existential creation, the record was less a straightforward presentation of the band’s signature style and more an exercise in appropriating the styles of others.
Cuomo and the gang still had their wry sense of humor, of course, but they weren’t speaking with their own voices: “Take Control” and “Fall Together” invoked gruff arena metal, “Keep Fishin’” had children’s song aspirations (and compounded them with a Muppet-laden video), and the vaguely experimental “Space Rock” sounded exactly as its title suggested. None of it, though, was particularly good, except in that one could generally tell precisely what crappy musical category they were trying to sound like. Even the hard-rocking “Dope Nose” was compromised by lyrics like “Cheese smells so good / On a burnt piece of lamb.” It was a disheartening turn, especially for fans who had most recently endured the self-titled “Green Album,” an uninspiring pop-rock endeavor that had the temerity to transcribe its vocal melodies to guitar and call them “solos.” The one glimmer of hope was in Maladroit’s closing number, “December,” whose sweet vocals and shimmery guitars echoed classics like “Holiday” and “Suzanne,” and let fans indulge the distant dream that Weezer would one day come to their senses.
Three years and one Ivy-league detour later, the band has delivered the first single from their fifth album, Make Believe, due out May 10th. The song, “Beverly Hills,” is immediately saddled with a profound responsibility: what will the next chapter in the ongoing story one of the most bemusing bands in rock history sound like?
Think of this: the rhythm from Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” the chords from Steve Miller’s “The Joker,” and the drinking-song vocals from Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Confused yet? Now add a video where the band hangs around the Playboy mansion surrounded by lip-synching models and bored-looking fans making that idiotic “W” sign with their hands. What you’re thinking is, “They must be joking.” In all likelihood, they are. About what, though, is harder to tell.
The really puzzling thing about this song is that the band seems hell-bent on discouraging the suspicion that they might have any actual talent. Cuomo proved on 1996’s dark, introspective Pinkerton that he could shred with the best of them, yet “Beverly Hills” finds him playing an infuriatingly bland solo that uses, of all things, a wah-wah pedal. Likewise, the always interesting and energetic Pat Wilson, known for drum fills that rock you so hard it hurts, is found pounding out the same sterile, undanceable, paint-by-numbers beat from beginning to end. It’s a mystery why anyone would deliberately choose not to live up to their potential, especially if their potential were as eminently clear as Weezer’s is. Where Cuomo could have garnered new fans while still pleasing old ones, he instead alienates the latter set with dull, half-spoken lyrics closest in content and emotional weight to Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag.” Meanwhile, the “gimme-gimme” refrain moaned by some lusty, unseen female vocalist on the chorus evokes the most shameful sides of hair metal and gangsta rap, and one begins to wonder just who Rivers Cuomo thinks he is. He might still look just like Buddy Holly, but he’s starting to act more like Fred Durst.
“Buddy Holly” was a great song because it had a just a light touch of tongue-in-cheek nostalgia, which merely served as the backdrop for soaring melodies and some seriously great hooks. Its sardonic side was balanced by quiet sincerity, and it was modest enough not to get ahead of itself. The humor in “Beverly Hills,” however, succeeds only in hinting at a tired kind of rock excess that was rightfully beaten into submission in the early nineties. Cuomo should know this, since in a way, he was one of the ones doing the beating: Weezer’s first and best album, a self-titled shiner clad in blue, was released in 1994. But in the eleven years since then, they have transformed from a subtle joke that only a few people got to a grandiose joke that nobody gets but them. Each successive album forces fans to make yet another leap of faith, to pretend that what they’re hearing is a clever comment on bad music, instead of just bad music. Make Believe is a regrettably apt title, because when a Weezer-loving generation of navel-gazers hears “Beverly Hills,” that’s precisely what they’ll have to do if they want any peace of mind.
Anyone who saw Adaptation and walked out dissatisfied knows this feeling. The film is a brilliant pastiche of “tortured artist” narratives and underdog comedies, in which director Spike Jonze boldly inserts screenwriter Charlie Kaufman into the story and allows him to control it. The film’s creative coup occurs when Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage, cracks under studio pressure, and the entire movie morphs into a spot-on imitation of formulaic Hollywood shlock. Of course, the problem is that then you have to watch it; the overblown chase sequences and trite sentimentality of the film’s third act are accurately stale, but they do their job a little too well.
One wonders then, if this effect could have rubbed off on another of Jonze’s famed collaborators, Rivers Cuomo of the now-ubiquitous Weezer. While it’s been a long time since the two teamed up to produce the unassailably clever videos for “Buddy Holly” and “Undone (The Sweater Song),” the 2002 release of Adaptation came at just about the same time that Weezer dropped their head-banging, power chord-crunching, and thoroughly incomprehensible fourth album, Maladroit. And like Jonze’s existential creation, the record was less a straightforward presentation of the band’s signature style and more an exercise in appropriating the styles of others.
Cuomo and the gang still had their wry sense of humor, of course, but they weren’t speaking with their own voices: “Take Control” and “Fall Together” invoked gruff arena metal, “Keep Fishin’” had children’s song aspirations (and compounded them with a Muppet-laden video), and the vaguely experimental “Space Rock” sounded exactly as its title suggested. None of it, though, was particularly good, except in that one could generally tell precisely what crappy musical category they were trying to sound like. Even the hard-rocking “Dope Nose” was compromised by lyrics like “Cheese smells so good / On a burnt piece of lamb.” It was a disheartening turn, especially for fans who had most recently endured the self-titled “Green Album,” an uninspiring pop-rock endeavor that had the temerity to transcribe its vocal melodies to guitar and call them “solos.” The one glimmer of hope was in Maladroit’s closing number, “December,” whose sweet vocals and shimmery guitars echoed classics like “Holiday” and “Suzanne,” and let fans indulge the distant dream that Weezer would one day come to their senses.
Three years and one Ivy-league detour later, the band has delivered the first single from their fifth album, Make Believe, due out May 10th. The song, “Beverly Hills,” is immediately saddled with a profound responsibility: what will the next chapter in the ongoing story one of the most bemusing bands in rock history sound like?
Think of this: the rhythm from Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” the chords from Steve Miller’s “The Joker,” and the drinking-song vocals from Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Confused yet? Now add a video where the band hangs around the Playboy mansion surrounded by lip-synching models and bored-looking fans making that idiotic “W” sign with their hands. What you’re thinking is, “They must be joking.” In all likelihood, they are. About what, though, is harder to tell.
The really puzzling thing about this song is that the band seems hell-bent on discouraging the suspicion that they might have any actual talent. Cuomo proved on 1996’s dark, introspective Pinkerton that he could shred with the best of them, yet “Beverly Hills” finds him playing an infuriatingly bland solo that uses, of all things, a wah-wah pedal. Likewise, the always interesting and energetic Pat Wilson, known for drum fills that rock you so hard it hurts, is found pounding out the same sterile, undanceable, paint-by-numbers beat from beginning to end. It’s a mystery why anyone would deliberately choose not to live up to their potential, especially if their potential were as eminently clear as Weezer’s is. Where Cuomo could have garnered new fans while still pleasing old ones, he instead alienates the latter set with dull, half-spoken lyrics closest in content and emotional weight to Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag.” Meanwhile, the “gimme-gimme” refrain moaned by some lusty, unseen female vocalist on the chorus evokes the most shameful sides of hair metal and gangsta rap, and one begins to wonder just who Rivers Cuomo thinks he is. He might still look just like Buddy Holly, but he’s starting to act more like Fred Durst.
“Buddy Holly” was a great song because it had a just a light touch of tongue-in-cheek nostalgia, which merely served as the backdrop for soaring melodies and some seriously great hooks. Its sardonic side was balanced by quiet sincerity, and it was modest enough not to get ahead of itself. The humor in “Beverly Hills,” however, succeeds only in hinting at a tired kind of rock excess that was rightfully beaten into submission in the early nineties. Cuomo should know this, since in a way, he was one of the ones doing the beating: Weezer’s first and best album, a self-titled shiner clad in blue, was released in 1994. But in the eleven years since then, they have transformed from a subtle joke that only a few people got to a grandiose joke that nobody gets but them. Each successive album forces fans to make yet another leap of faith, to pretend that what they’re hearing is a clever comment on bad music, instead of just bad music. Make Believe is a regrettably apt title, because when a Weezer-loving generation of navel-gazers hears “Beverly Hills,” that’s precisely what they’ll have to do if they want any peace of mind.
posted by Daoud at 3:00 PM
