Weezer's missing ingredient

Image by parn via Flickr

Upon the release of Weezer's third album I was confounded. I heard sounds emanating from my car stereo that had familiar Weezer flavors, but as I sat listening in the Hasting's parking lot, each track felt cold, shallow, and foreign. I never want artists to safely reproduce earlier works because growth and experimentation is key to a lasting band, but where was my Weezer?

Plastic wrapping and sticky security strips, once a nagging barrier between me and fresh audio pleasantries, vomited from my shopping bag, reflecting my sense of disgust. The songs, the whole album, was short quips of meaningless dribble; it was cookie cutter pop that didn't justify their previous years of silence. I didn't understand. I had heard "hash pipe" and thought it was kind of ridiculous but assumed naively that it would be the isolated radio single that was necessary for album promotion. It was instead the baseline of mediocrity for the green "Weezer" album.

I looked at the cover and looked at the faces. Something was terribly wrong. I drove home, able to listen to half the album once over again, needing answers. I called a friend who I thought would share in my dispair, but he failed to hear me as I assumed he failed to hear that disaster of a CD. "It's not that bad," he said.

I went into a rant that would be repeated many times over the next few years, trying to explain how solid and timeless the first two Weezer albums were and that these recent imposters were shells of the men they once were, devoid of talent and soul.

Weeks later, after a few attempts at "giving it another shot," I retired Weezer's third album into a sleeve somewhere in the back of my CD case, along with other collections of dissapointment and various gifted discs. Many months passed and I heard rumors of another album release. "It all makes sense now" I thought. That was just a fun throwaway album, like a bunch of B-side songs rejected from the upcoming legitimate CD. It was all just silly antics and they weren't being serious, those goofy guys! I was relieved, but only temporarily.

Of course a replay of previous year's events would occur with more angry ranting and general heartbreak, but with time, and acceptance at Weezer's irreversible decline and failure as respectable musicians, I moved on. I found new bands and new sounds and some new disappointments as well.

The painful resurgence of this subject is due to Pandora's insistence on recommending Weezer songs for many of my personalized stations. I decline most and praise a few, but it got me wondering just what happened to those guys. Some research, more simplified and unified now due to Wikipedia, and I discover the removal of bassist Matt Sharp was the reason all musical and structural integrity was eradicated from this tumbling tower of a band.

As others have said, Sharp is no musical genius, and perhaps he wasn't the heart and soul of Weezer or their sole talent, but it is unquestionable that his absense severely altered their sound, lyrical depth and upward development as a group.

Rethinking the concept of the third album, I realize that maybe the remaining members were very self aware of the band's reinvention. The album is self titled like their first one and the cover is a solid color, green instead of blue, with all the members striking a pose as if introducing themselves to the world. It is only in thinking that they too recognized Weezer had become something else, even if it was a devolvement, that I regain some thread of respect for the band. In listening to those first two albums I hold on to this thread tightly, but with great solemnity I will be forever walking away.

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