Scott & Rivers

There’s a 99% possibility that some 10th-grade boy out there is currently relying on Pinkerton to guide him through the indignities of adolescence, and how’s this for some perspective: He wasn’t even born when Weezer released that album. And it’s been that long since any form of denial played a role in Rivers Cuomo’s music. From “Pork and Beans” to “Can’t Stop Partying”; from the Raditude cover art to the Hurley cover art; from the Weezer Cruise to the Pinkerton reunion tour, Cuomo has pretty much done everything over the past 17 years except take “no” for an answer. So when you consider his longstanding predilection for Asian culture (to put it mildly), the only thing surprising about him making a Japanese-language album is that it took him until 2013 to do so. And yet, Scott & Rivers is one of the few unequivocally good ideas he’s had in a very, very long time: name a 21st century Weezer album that wouldn’t be immediately improved if you didn’t understand English.

Cuomo linked up with a suitable travel buddy in Scott Murphy, frontman for Allister, a Drive Thru pop-punk band you might be familiar with if you keep tabs on the Warped Tour, but have likely only heard if you’ve been to the Warped Tour. They're very much “big in Japan.” So what can be expected of Scott & Rivers? Are Murphy and Cuomo going to fully concede to the stylistic tenets of J-pop? Is it simply going to split the difference between Girlfriends and Dead Ends with lyrics like “goddamn you half-Japanese girls” sung in full Japanese? Is it going to appeal to the 18-year old girl who lives in small city in Japan or the 35-year-old she grew up to be since Pinkerton? Holy shit, there’s a song called “Butterfly” on here; is Rivers really going there?

Some of these questions are answered definitively, all are answered rather uninterestingly. No matter what language you speak or how familiar you are with either artist's work, there isn't much culture shock to be had listening to Scott & Rivers. In short, it’s a hell of a lot like an off-brand recent Weezer album, in that the style isn’t guitar rock taking cues from factory pop, but factory pop interpreted through clinical guitars that sound like they’re sourced from test tubes rather than tube amps. It would sound overproduced for 1998 yet seems curiously rinky-dink compared to the current pop maximalism of any continent; Scott & Rivers splits most of its time between ruthlessly utilitarian power pop and midtempo, jangly acoustic alt-rock that reimagines the break between Pinkerton and the Green Album as one where Cuomo ditched Harvard for higher education in the form of Stroke 9 or Eve 6 CDs. Or, in the case of the pure synth-pop numbers and the cover of Kimura Kaela's "Butterfly" (sorry), those of Vitamin C or any other sub-Spice I can’t immediately recall.

This isn’t some Kickstarter lark-- it’s being released on Universal’s Japanese imprint. But the few hooks that are sung in English make it abundantly clear that neither Cuomo nor Murphy's songwriting has been altered in the slightest: “I love, love, love my homely girl!/ She just knocks me to the ground!” “I freakin’ love my life!/ It’s turning out just right!/ It’s a party every night!” Those two songs are “Homely Girl” and “Freakin’ Love My Life”, naturally. Otherwise, the frictionless production and rounded, vowel-heavy Japanese phonetics gives Scott & Rivers a sonic viscosity where consuming one song or all 12 feels roughly equal. It sticks with you, but the sweetness has a sickly chemical feel.

Cuomo told us from the beginning that his favorite rock group was Kiss, so we shouldn’t be surprised about him using his artistic goodwill as quarters in a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, going after whatever monetization opportunity presents itself. In some ways, it’s weirdly admirable. Scott & Rivers just seems more savvy than anything-- you sense that he and Murphy know something us Yankees don’t, or maybe Scott & Rivers is just prelude to Weezer’s inevitable Live at Budokan. There’s a heartening belief in how Cuomo still sticks to writing the kind of songs that need mass exposure for them to mean anything to anybody, and assumes rock radio still has the juice to provide it. There’s no doubt he believes it, so there’s no way a song called “Freakin’ Love My Life” could be ironic; Cuomo’s fantasy world is the realest thing he knows.