I think Rivers Cuomo might have gotten the message that the world is not a fan of today’s Weezer. Sure, Cuomo & Co. still put out an album of new material this year (Hurley, which probably won’t be making the TMT Favorite Albums of 2010 list to say the least), but Weezer have also been making strides to return to the past, when people did like them. Just recently, Rivers Cuomo added another promise to the list.
So how did we love them? Let us count the ways that they’re trying to remind us. There’s the Pinkerton/Blue Album tour, for one, coinciding with the deluxe reissue of Pinkerton on November 2. The same day, Weezer are also releasing Death to False Metal, the terribly-titled CD compilation of unreleased rarities from the last 20 years. Rivers can’t time-travel to the days when he was respected (or semi-respected — nobody takes bespectacled 24-year-old Harvard students playing music seriously), but at least he has the money to do all this and publish a book that may last longer than our rancor against the band since the Green Album.
According to Spinner, Rivers Cuomo has announced a book that will be out by late November, collecting ephemera and evidence of a rock ‘n’ roll soul in Cuomo during the “Pinkerton years.” “[The Pinkerton Diaries will be] a collection of all my journals, emails, letters, photos, school papers — everything from those years ‘94-‘97, so you get an inside look as to exactly what I was thinking,” he stated in a recent press conference. We can finally find out who that Madame Butterfly was!
If that’s not enough to convince you of Cuomo’s nostalgia, he’s also leaked news of a third Alone album, covering recordings from the glory days of Pinkerton. In short, do your best to forget about Raditude and Hurley, and until November, listen to two tracks from the deluxe Pinkerton edition and Death to False Metal here and, of course, here. Then stop and ask yourself: when was the last time such a supposedly “content” musician’s career was in such retrograde?
• Weezer: http://www.weezer.com