10 years ago, Weezer took “the conversation” off repeat – and skipped to an oft-forgotten gem in a prolific and decidedly uneven discography.
Almost living caricatures of the stumbling, socially awkward nerd archetype that populated a wealth of Gen X classic media, Weezer are perhaps the most successful example of “geek rock” to ever hit the college airwaves.
The band embraced playful but earnest songwriting and a full, proficient power pop sound with its beloved 1994 self-titled debut, commonly called the “Blue Album” because of its iconic cover and to distinguish from the many other self-titled albums the band would continue to release up through the present day.
Two years later, Weezer followed “Blue” with the more controversial “Pinkerton” – rougher around the edges with both its production and lyrics, the initially maligned album would eventually emerge in the public opinion as a misunderstood master work in expressing frontman Rivers Cuomo’s feelings of loneliness, heartbreak and self-doubt.
The self-titled album “Green” would follow, and although the band continued to release albums, eventually the magnitude of the hits started to melt. Rock music was no longer the commercial titan it had long been, and Weezer was not getting any younger.
It’s true I have a great appreciation for those first two albums and a selection of picks from everything up through 2008’s Red Album (though I’ll leave “Raditude” for the true Weezies).
I want to talk about something fresh.
In keeping with the geeky image, Weezer was pretty internet-savvy in a way that not all bands could claim to be. With how downright goofy they come across, it feels strange to put them in the same category as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails as part of the first frontier of entertainers to take the internet seriously as a tool to reach their audience. But they were there, releasing the “Buddy Holly” music video as a bundle with Windows 95 and posting on their own fan forums.
Even so, by the time we reached 2010, all that stuff was outdated; people were using social media rather than forums and Windows 95 was a whisper of the past. After “Raditude” failed to capitalize on even the most base instinct of internet users – that of looking at funny animal pictures – it could have been grim for Weezer’s prospects of continuing to capture the medium of the moment as they had in years past.
Enter “Hurley.”
From first impact, Weezer’s 2010 album – complete with a candid smiling photo of “Lost” actor Jorge Garcia who played namesake Hurley Reyes on the show – is complete and total geek city, and it’s amazing.
But these aren’t the ‘90s geeks you knew and loved. Gone are the days of scrappy, mall-skulking, mop-haired teens. These are 30-something year-olds hopped up on coffee in their cubicles, endlessly refreshing Twitter so they can remain tapped into the latest discussions of their favorite TV series.
And isn’t that the beauty of the internet? Through the magic of remote synchronous communication technology, total strangers from different walks of life can unite over niche interests; at least, that was still the optimistic vision for the time. Weezer showed their hand on purpose here – they weren’t just entertainers in their own right, they could also be “Lost” fanboys.
“Hurley” connects with that optimism in a way that is both imperfect and deeply moving to put forth Weezer’s blogger-emo opus, still connected directly to the root of power pop while building upon the sound with the ethos of a new decade. This was the new frontier – not dissimilar from the band’s proclivity for self-titling their albums, the band used Hurley’s name here as a vessel to launch a whole new Weezer.
The thread that led me to understanding “Hurley” started with a song I didn’t like at first.
“Trainwrecks” is an abrasive tune; Cuomo practically squeals about how much he and his friends suck while the rest of the band, fittingly, chugs along in a digitally processed rock and roll engine.
Even so, this hyperactive ode to dysfunction lays it all out on the glowing screen: “You don’t keep house and I’m a slob/You’re freaking out ’cause I can’t keep a job/We don’t update our blogs/We are trainwrecks.” It frames the singer’s blog as an equivalent space to those of the home and workplace, while simultaneously demonstrating the level of performed disinterest that would eventually grow to dominance in today’s online culture. Indeed, I’m surprised we haven’t seen this song more closely enter the orbit of present meme spaces considering the poorly aged line about “crash[ing] a Diddy party in disguise.”
That abrasiveness one can hear on “Trainwrecks” isn’t a simple collision nor an accident. All of “Hurley” is coated with sugary pop production that serves to further emphasize the rough edges and odd angles off of which the band bounces. Despite Cuomo co-producer Shawn Everett’s name also appearing on “Raditude” – a record fated, in many ways, to be the dark shadow looming over anyone’s first listen to “Hurley” – his background as an indie rock producer appears to have paid off here, as well as on future projects with Weezer like the “Pinkerton” deluxe tracks and “Everything Will Be Alright in the End.”
It also feels fitting for “Hurley” to be Weezer’s one album released on Epitaph Records. Weezer has always been adjacent to pop punk and emo with their emotionally forward lyricism and rock instrumentation that builds and crashes in turn, but they always stuck closer to the alternative college rock shores. With “Hurley,” they’re closer than ever to those waters, bringing in what I may dare to identify as post-hardcore influences. Across the first three-song run of “Memories,” “Ruling Me” and “Trainwrecks,” the band sounds ready to tear a venue up.
One of the most raucous songs on the album is my personal favorite, “Where’s My Sex?” Far from whatever distasteful interpretations the title may inspire, this is a truly deranged and absurd tune in which Cuomo frantically searches for his sex, a suggestively described but decidedly corporeal object separate from himself.
“Where’s My Sex?” is a true new millennium headbanger, but there may be more than detergent and Bounce in that washing machine. It is a humorous concept, but the fruitless search on which Cuomo endeavors brings on a sense of anxiety that is difficult to place but certainly bears some resemblance to the sexual discontent displayed on “Pinkerton.” This is a shining example of one of Cuomo’s greatest strengths as a songwriter; he is a goofball and he writes funny songs about topics ranging from mediocre routines of life, pop culture and even complete nonsense, but through doing so he still addresses an internal feeling of tension. It feels impossible to know the listener is ever getting the full story.
Despite the mania demonstrated by much of “Hurley,” there is still a softer side to this version of Weezer. Acoustic guitars and folk instruments make recurring appearances, sometimes evoking the rock and roll experimentation of ‘60s and ‘70s folk revivalists. In this way, “Hurley” can feel like a premonition of future Weezer efforts that leaned in harder to a retro songwriter feel; generally well-liked efforts like “Everything Will Be Alright” and the self-titled “White Album” probably owe it a good chunk of debt.
“Unspoken” is perhaps my favorite “Hurley” track to ditch the distortion, at least for the first portion of it; Cuomo’s lightning bolt guitar strap still comes out to play with an electric kick-in. Over one of the best guitar riffs the band has to offer on this project, the lyrics here are once again reminiscent of “Pinkerton” – almost. Heartbreak got back in the driver’s seat for “Unspoken,” but I fear the lyrical quality didn’t quite make it to the car. “And if you take this away from me/I’ll never forgive you, can’t you see?” is an unfortunate first-draft rhyme that drags down what otherwise could easily be counted as another of my favorite tracks.
Album closer “Time Flies” has a similar “so close” moment. In keeping with the more grounded and acoustic side of “Hurley,” it’s a bittersweet song about getting older that would be perfect as the soundtrack to the last beach day of summer. For some reason, though, someone must have decided to sneak in during the mixing process and turn the drums all the way up to the point where they start to drown out the rest of the song.
Simple mistakes like flat lyrics or mixing errors might mar otherwise good tunes, but make no mistake: “Hurley” does have its moment of reckoning with the less glamorous side of geekdom. “Smart Girls” is my least favorite track on the album and represents one of my least favorite types of Weezer songs, where Cuomo simply picks a genre of girl rather than any one girl in particular and rambles meagerly about the idea of flirtation for a while. To make things all the worse, the presence of “Smart Girls” as one of the rowdier songs on “Hurley” manages to elevate that rambling to a shout.
Like some kind of bastard combination of “Mambo No. 5” and “Green Eggs and Ham,” Cuomo manages to compile not just lists of girls’ names but also lists of places one could theoretically meet such titular smart girls, including “on a bus, on a train, on a boat, on a plane.” Genius. And at no point does one get a sense of what makes these girls so smart. Are they computer geeks? Writers? Engineers? Astrophysicists? The listener does not know and seemingly neither does Cuomo.
This is where Weezer crosses the line between charmingly awkward and frustratingly inept. Although “Smart Girls” is ultimately mostly harmless, it doesn’t change the fact that what could have been a testament to all the real-life nerd girls out there, many of whom were probably among the first to download “Hurley” upon its release, instead comes across as a shallow and, yes, patriarchal rundown of Cuomo’s trend of fetishism. Even “Pinkerton,” with its poor-me attitude and off-putting attitude toward Asian women, never felt this gross, despite being written by a younger, more chauvinist Cuomo. At least there were always good tunes and clever lines to back it up, and it all felt like the legitimate consequences one had to accept when engaging with a project that borders on confessional. I have made the comparison multiple times as an extension of my admiration for the latter, but make no mistake: “Hurley” is no “Pinkerton.”
Time flew, and it was not too kind to “Hurley.” The internet ceased to be a niche space, growing into a nearly universal tool across all industries. The blogging era largely ended, giving way to the rise of photo and video-focused platforms. The pop ecosystem largely left rock at the doorstep in favor of hip hop, electronic and a swathe of new emerging trends.
Even so, I think it is worth revisiting what “Hurley” had to offer – a somewhat sage vision of a “Brave New World” that offered endless opportunity along with equally endless stress and a rocking set of tunes that set the stage for the mixed but overall worthwhile middle period of Weezer’s career.
In the album’s first track, titled “Memories,” Cuomo yearns for the old days of Weezer and asks, “How can we make it back there?” Now, 15 years and an unimaginable amount of change later, I’m ready to make it to the next step forward and create some new memories with “Hurley” by my side.
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
