Tuesday, March 07, 2017

The birth of uncool

At the inaugural poker evening at our new house recently, we'd got through Car Seat Headrest's Teens Of Denial (with which I'm currently obsessed) and some of Cloud Nothings' Life Without Sound before one of the party commented, "Why not just be done with it and put the first Weezer album on?!" So we did.

The comment was a bit unfair on Car Seat Headrest and Cloud Nothings, but the truth is that both LPs are firmly in the lineage of Weezer - a marker of just how influential that record's chunky hooks and nerdy, neurotic lyrics have proven since its release back in 1994.

By complete coincidence, the day after our poker session Pitchfork published Jillian Mapes' retrospective appraisal of an album that brought Rivers Cuomo's love of Kiss, The Beach Boys and alt rock/grunge together with his insecurity and ability to analyse and savage his own behaviour and thought patterns in public.

While widely ridiculed and misunderstood upon its release, Pinkerton is probably now lauded more - but Mapes does an excellent job of detailing why its predecessor continues to resonate.

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