The NME is awfully excited about the leaked Weezer track “Turnin’ Turnin’,” which appeared online without warning today. “The backdrop for the YouTube video shows the cover of the band’s recent self-titled album, known as The Red Album, suggesting that the new song may be recent!” Yup, and if they’d checked out Rivers Cuomo’s “Let’s Write A Sawng” Web experiment, they’d know that “Turnin’ Turnin'” is something he and his fan club have been working on for months. Almost as sad as the NME‘s lack of awareness is that the song, while lyrically thumbsucky (“You say I should go to school / hey man, back up, cuz you don’t look so cool!”), is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than much of The Red Album. (Remember “Heart Songs?”) Part of its appeal is that the opening arpeggios remind me of Rooney’s “I’m Shakin’,” a song from 2003 that I still can’t believe wasn’t written by Rivers and Co.
My personal feeling about Weezer is that they made two of the best rock albums of the ’90s, two good albums that traded lyrical coherence for good hooks, and Make Believe, a near-abortion that revealed how lucky we were to have Rivers Cuomo babble about hash pipes and dope noses instead of starkly announcing “We Are All On Drugs.” “Pork And Beans” has a Blue Album-worthy chorus hook and distortion pedal push, but the lyrics are a pretty embarrassing attempt to seek sympathy for his “uncool” songs. Now “Heart Songs” offers a star’s sequel to “In The Garage,” name-dropping the artists who helped him throughout the gestative years of his career (before Nirvana changed his life) over a creepily tepid backdrop featuring acoustic guitar, strings and what sounds like a glockenspiel.
Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has been hinting that he plans to publish his memoirs for some time now, but perhaps the delay is understandable considering the backlog of material: “I’m still working on most every day and I really enjoy it…Right now I have eight volumes sketched out.” More »
Our thanks to the tipster who sent along this MP3 of “Pig,” a track purportedly taken from Rivers Cuomo’s latest demo CD. More »
