The ’90s were a strange decade for music. It seems the catharsis for the laughable panache of hair metal, the unmistakable sheen of shameless power-pop outfits, and the homebrewed sincerity of hip-hop’s early years split into two dominant camps. There was the talent bred in MTV test tubes — your boy bands, Britney Spears and the like — that was limited to overproduction and catchy hooks. The other side found an affinity for flannel and downturned guitars: grunge popularized by the snotty middle-finger attitude of Nirvana’s Nevermind and its moody offshoots.
The first of many monochromatically backdropped, untitled releases, 1994’s Weezer (The Blue Album) brought what the MTV fangirls and angry “mall rats” wanted: a marriage of the disparate schools of thought. The genius of the album lies in its inability to be categorized. It sails early power-pop tendencies on a wave of overdriven guitars. Songs keenly make nods to Dungeons & Dragons and a throwback medley of long-gone pop culture icons. Weezer is an album from another time, but its entrance into the ’90s couldn’t be more appreciated.
The album opens with “My Name Is Jonas,” an unashamed wall of heavy chords juxtaposed with a quick acoustic ditty and saccharine harmonies. The next pair of tracks could easily meld into one cohesive narrative. “No One Else” is a sleek surf-rock stomp that chronicles an obsessive relationship, with the adjoining “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” having the narrator picking up the pieces with as much to say as its wordy title suggests.
“Surf Wax America,” a personal favorite, has the angst of Kurt Cobain and friends (“I’m going surfing ‘cuz I don’t like your face”), the sun-kissed comedy of the Beach Boys (“You take your car to work / I’ll take my board”) and a bridge solely populated by squirrely vocals, a quiet organ, and ride cymbal accents. It’s a sonic palette that delivers a range of noise in just over three minutes.
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The Blue Album_ is ripe with radio darlings. “Undone (The Sweater Song)” never takes itself too seriously. Interpolated with dialogue from a supposed Weezer show, the track mythologizes an ending relationship as an unraveling sweater. “Say It Ain’t So,” the laid-back ballad, is as power-pop as they come. Uneasy anecdotal verses give way for a simplistic chorus so overwrought (“Say it ain’t so / Your drug is a heartbreaker”) that if AOL Instant Messenger were popular in ’94, the lyric lines would have been displayed on the Away Messages of needlessly dramatic teenagers.
“Buddy Holly” is Weezer’s love letter to a bygone era. Nineties satire abounds (“What’s with these homies dissin’ my girl? / Why do they gotta front?”) but it’s a honest-to-goodness pop love song, complete with “Ooh-wee-ooh’s,” playful Rhodes piano and a satisfying guitar solo.
Returning to album tracks, the harmonica-laden “In the Garage” tells the tale of a hybrid comic-book aficionado/heavy-metal junkie. It’s your standard Weezer song: a midtempo number with a narrator that has one glaring idiosyncrasy. “Holiday” is a straight callback to the ’50s – simple lyrics laid out at a sing-song pace, but it’s unafraid to turn up to 11 at times.
The album’s closer, “Only in Dreams,” is eight minutes and lovelorn. Never subject to a drastic tempo hike, “Only in Dreams” carries the insufferable lyrics of vocalist Rivers Cuomo and a delicious bass line, but fails to pack a punch.
Weezer would try to duplicate the success of The Blue Album with the later Green and Red discs. They simply can’t stand up. With few missteps, an undeniable charm and a timeless accessibility, there’s a reason I still know most of the words.
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