Home demos at their best offer a glimmer of hope to what a song could become as a finished product. On the other hand they can be the vague meanderings of a musician's bad ideas. Every once in a while one of those musicians feels like unloading their homemade tapes on the record buying public.Weezer's Rivers Cuomo is just such a musician – unleashing the coulda-been songs he recorded alone in his bedroom. Many of them should have stayed there.
Given the stories of Cuomo's frantic songwriting pace, coupled with the six tight, no filler Weezer records, there should be scores of quality Cuomo in the vaults. He must have left the golden nuggets back in the mines, for certain to see the light of day on a future, proper Weezer release.
Apart from an Ice Cube cover ("The Bomb") and a few stabs at a rock opera, Alone does not deviate too much from standard Weezer fare. The rock opera he had in mind eventually became Pinkerton. Thankfully those songs were focused and canned the lousy storyline.
Cuomo's liner notes explain each track, a biography in song of sorts, as well as private photos. The liner notes is infinitely more interesting than the songs and say much more about Cuomo's life at the time. The whole project is a mixture of charming and bizarre. Jokes and asides that only him and his friends would find funny, we just laugh because we probably should.
There are a few gems but Alone is geared toward the army of Weezer and the strange birds that are Cuomo's obsessed devotees. Bless them.
