Difficult second album

A deliberately messy, abrasive, pained record that opens with feedback and stomping drums and chronicles its frontman's difficulty coming to terms with the runaway success of a breakthrough album beloved by MTV, manifested as anxiety and anhedonia: yep, it's not much of a stretch to suggest that Pinkerton is Weezer's In Utero. Here's an appraisal of Weezer's second LP and its unusual critical history (initially critically reviled and misunderstood, now widely lauded as their best) by Sam Lambeth of Louder Than War, to mark its twentieth birthday.