Weezer’s 1996 sophomore album Pinkerton is a fucked-up, horny, self-doubting scrawl of a record that famously almost ended the band. Pinkerton was a commercial and mostly critical failure when it came out, but it quickly found a huge cult audience and informed tons of emo and indie rock bands that followed. Weezer never made another record that sounded remotely like that one. Plenty of people have covered Pinkerton songs over the years, and now we’ll get to hear what happens when two fans reimagine the entire LP in cabaret form.
A little while ago, singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield toured with Shane Tutmarc, mastermind of the indie-pop project Dolour. They bonded over their shared love of Weezer in general and Pinkerton in particular, and a running joke about a “piano album” version of Pinkerton eventually turned into a real thing. Here’s how Mayfield explains it on her website:
Shane came out on tour with me and played bass and sang harmonies and we talked about recording some cover songs together. We are both huge Weezer fans, and were listening to a lot of Weezer in the van and would soundcheck with “Crab” quite a bit. But our mutual favorite album of theirs is Pinkerton, and a running joke became that after the tour we would go home and record all of Pinkerton as a piano album. This “joke” eventually became more and more of a real thing with both of us being like “really?” And “If you’re into it I’m into it,” so Shane started working on it living in Nashville, and I would send in rough vocal tracks from at the time my motorhome in Desert Hot Springs, California. I came through for the Justin Earle memorial at the Ryman and stayed and sang the entire album in about a day in a half during a snowy time at Shane and Tanya’s abode in his home studio.
Please enjoy these songs and two tour mates and pals truly just having fun which is what music should be all about.
Below, check out Mayfield and Dolour’s version of the Weezer classic “Why Bother?,” which really hits different in this form.
