September 05, 2010|By Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times Rivers Cuomo has no problem admitting that he sometimes still feels like a teenager. "Maybe I haven't matured in some ways that other 40-year-olds have," the Weezer frontman said in a recent interview. "Or maybe I'm more willing to honor those immature voices inside myself that other 40-year-olds aren't."
He certainly isn't very age-appropriate when performing, which is a good thing for a rock star, even one who's now married with a kid and a degree from Harvard. Back in August, Weezer played the headlining spot in the concert series attached to the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach. The event attracted thousands of swimsuit-clad kids to a makeshift arena extending right to the edge of the Pacific — including many very tan, semi-naked, spirited women, babes of the kind over whom Cuomo has fretted in dozens of songs, all the way to last year's "(If You're Wondering if I Want You To) I Want You To."
Cuomo jumped into that sea of bodies every chance he could. "Welcome to Southern California!" he shouted. "The land of sun, surf and alternative rock!" He bent his slight frame back to mirror the curve of the giant beach balls he flung into the audience. He was joyful, unhinged. No one would have suspected that this was Weezer's 21st show this year, midway through a schedule that's ranged from a prime spot at Bonnaroo to gigs at casinos and county fairs.
A week later, Cuomo was all friendly business at the Lair, a recording studio in Beverlywood, arriving promptly for a morning interview scheduled after his daily meditation session. With producer Shawn Everett hovering nearby and Julian Casablancas, singer for the Strokes, popping in midway to prepare for a collaborative session, Cuomo was in his element, relaxed and forthcoming. He was on hand to discuss Weezer's eighth studio album, "Hurley," which hits retail stores Sept. 14, and his nearly 20 years as rock's definitive frustrated young man.
He got wide-eyed when asked about Weezer's surprisingly still awesome live show. The babes aren't the point, it turns out. It's the act of performing.
When Cuomo formed Weezer, he was 22 and he knew what he wanted: "I was trying to get as simple as possible," he said. Now, he's undeniably grown up, with a comfortable life raising his 3-year-old daughter, Mia, with his Japanese-born wife, Kyoko Ito, and a daily Vipassana meditation practice that he says has improved his creative process. Yet he says he feels more uncertain than ever.
"In so many ways, I feel like I'm just starting," Cuomo said. "Like these are my first shows. I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing — there are all these challenges, and I feel like I'm seeing the audience for the first time."
Cuomo has ample reason to insist that his own spirit — and Weezer's — is being born again. The band is releasing "Hurley" through the beloved Southern California indie label Epitaph, after spending its entire career on various imprints of the major label Geffen. The new material came in several quick sessions, with the rest of the bandcoming in to "bang it out," as drummer-guitarist Pat Wilson describes the process, adding to Cuomo's rough demos.
For all their deliberate mess, the "Hurley" songs epitomize Cuomo's gift for compact , simple songwriting. "That's a great question — how do you make this old structure fresh?" he said. "It's so important to me that I feel like I'm doing something that's never been done before, whether that's in the show, or I'm writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it."
Cuomo and his bandmates have earned unflagging fan devotion by doing something that seems almost facile, but is in fact fairly rare. Within rock's evolution, a central role belongs to sticklers such as Cuomo, obsessed with what makes the genre work at its most basic structural level. Such artists are disciplined in ways both musical — concentrating on a few chords, an amplified voice, a distorted guitar part — and emotional: teasing out every nuance of rock's great themes, like horniness and heartbreak and the kind of self-doubt that can suddenly turn a grown person into a teenager.
In a phone interview, Epitaph founder Brett Gurewitz made the obvious comparison between Cuomo and Buddy Holly, the rock pioneer whose name served as the title of one of Weezer's earliest hits. "He's the awkward genius everyone can love," he said. But then Gurewitz came closer to the point. "Part of a great pop song is universality," he said. "There's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to be obtuse to be smart."
Over Weezer's long career, Cuomo has shown how a rock singer can be both direct and intelligent; both enthusiastically juvenile and somehow pretty deep. Credit his fascination with song forms, which led him to study music composition at Harvard (after he had become a rock star in the mid-1990s).
