In the mid-’90s, Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo couldn’t help but expose his every thought through the polished power pop of the band’s self-titled debut and the brutally honest, surprisingly raw followup, Pinkerton. The critical and commercial drubbing that the latter album took didn’t do much for his openness, though, and he’s spent the better part of the new millennium releasing one catchy but hollow album after another. After 2005’s calamitous Make Believe, with its Joan Jet knock-off single “Beverly Hills,” longtime fans were forced to wonder if the singer actually had any emotions left to explore.
It looks like Cuomo is feeling introspective again, though. Not only has he announced plans for a book documenting the two-year stretch leading up to his band’s first album — it’s reportedly over 400 pages in length already — he’s also opened up his vault of self-made demos on Alone.
Of the album’s 18 tracks, the only one that’s previously seen light in any form is “Buddy Holly,” the band’s breakout single. The song is played a bit slower here, but is otherwise the same, right down to the falsetto backup vocals and spaghetti-western keyboard hook — it seems almost like it’s included just to reinforce Cuomo’s status as Weezer’s sole creative force. Sure, that’s no revelation, but neither is anything on display on Alone. Rather, it’s an interesting look at Cuomo’s evolution as a songwriter over the past decade.
After a brief, Beach Boys-inspired introduction, Alone moves on to a cover of “The World We Love So Much,” written by a pre-New Radicals Gregg Alexander. It’s by far the most raw vocal performance Cuomo has put out, occasionally verging on grunge-rock parody, but it’s still kind of charming to hear the singer struggling to find his voice. Cuomo’s take on Ice Cube’s “The Bomb” is equally awkward, showcasing a fondness for noise that he rarely lets slip.
The real meat of the release, though, lies in the four songs originally recorded for Songs from the Black Hole, the sophomore album Cuomo eventually scrapped in favour of Pinkerton. It’s easy to speculate about why the album was dumped — Weezer was already being pegged as “geek rock” thanks to references to Dungeons and Dragons, and an album-length space opera wouldn’t have done much to dispel the image. Cuomo’s geekiness is one of his most endearing qualities, though, and you can practically see the grin on his face when he breaks out the vocodor in “Blast Off,” or bursts into joyous harmonies on “Dude We’re Finally Landing.”
Like Weezer itself, Alone falters when it gets to the newer material (“This is the Way,” recorded in 2007, is a particularly painful stab at modern radio pop), but you can’t deny the strength of the earlier material. Who knows, maybe this bout of self-reflection will inspire Cuomo to put some of himself back into the next Weezer album.
