as you don't know me, i should begin by pointing out that i was never a really big weezer fan. i certainly enjoyed the blue record, but it wasn't in any way a pivotal record in my life. i actually had to overcome a lot of internalized opposition to it before i could even give it a chance.
it was that stupid buddy holly song, which for a while in late 1994 and early 1995 (grade 8) just saturated everything. it was in constant rotation on muchmusic. it was on the radio once an hour. it was in people's walkmans, on people's shirts - you just couldn't get away from the stupid thing. as such, it became incredibly annoying. it was worse than that, though - as they were the cool thing, and i was anti-cool, i had an aesthetic obligation to dislike them.
what ended up happening was that i asked my old neighbour to dub me a copy of the most recent collective soul record (so that i could teach myself how to play gel out of the guitar world tabs because it was a really neat solo) and he put a copy of the blue album on the other side, without really thinking about it much. i realized there was a tab for say it ain't so in the same magazine, so i checked it out and actually had a lot of fun playing it. still, on first listen the record didn't really click. it came off as overly simplistic and kind of stupid; worse, it sounded like it was recorded through a tin can.
it turns out that i liked that collective soul record a lot more than i thought i would, so the weezer record was given more chances than i would have otherwise given it (as the tape had to rewind, anyways). what eventually ended up swaying me was the epic track at the end, only in dreams. i had to work backwards from that track. i also found that surf wax america reminded me a lot of geek usa for some reason.
somewhere around the 10th listen, the record finally clicked all at once and it ended up with some heavy play, afterwards. but, the truth is that weezer really wasn't in any way a natural fit for me and that i had to carefully work out it's aesthetic boneheadedness in order to get to the tasty marrow of harmonic complexity. so, you should keep that in mind as i describe my initial reaction to pinkerton.
the very first impression of the record was that it was incorporating a wider sound and that was a net positive. the first thing you notice is that the production is a lot cleaner and the second thing you notice is the use of things like synthesizers and percussion, which would have been very out of place on the first record. the presence of acoustic ballads (as well as some unexpectedly urban takes on rock music) allow for more tonal variety. so, the higher production value immediately jumps out as a net benefit and the immediate impression is that this is a more polished, produced record - and that that is a good thing.
on further listens, though, it becomes apparent that the disc is frontloaded to the first couple of tracks and that the songwriting takes a nose dive around the point that the tape flips. the vocals also begin to reveal themselves as hard to listen to because you feel embarrassed for the singer for singing them.
even recognizing these flaws, i think the record is salvageable by merely cutting it down a few tracks. i suppose you could argue that it would be very short, but that's a better outcome than publishing filler that is so bad that it makes you feel uncomfortable just listening to it.
as mentioned, it took a long time for the first record to click for me. should i be cautious with analyzing this one? i just don't feel that i'm going to come around to it the same way. but, if you were to trim it down a little, i would passively enjoy it well enough. i'm left to conclude that this is a mediocre record that has it's points of interest but simply doesn't impress.
