From "Only in Dreams" to "The Angel and the One"

In light of Kevin McFarland's great essay on Weezer's "Only In Dreams" (and I say 'great essay' because I got the same tingles from reading about the song as I usually do from hearing it), I dug up a couple of grafs I wrote about Weezer's red album for Beliefnet. It was never published, as my editor left Beliefnet around the time I finished it.

Anyway, I think McFarland was too quick to dismiss "The Angel and the One," which for my money is the only song in the Weezer oeuvre that comes close -- and deliberately so -- to doing what "Only in Dreams" does. Here's the relevant excerpt from what I wrote then:

Incredibly, Weezer has gone from being a band known mostly for nerd glasses, sweaters, and going "ooo-eee-ooo" – and more recently, performing with that dancing banana and the Numa Numa guy -- to one that can write an epic spiritual rocker ending with the mantra "Peace, Peace, Shalom." Rivers Cuomo has changed his priorities. 

Blame Rick Rubin, the producer who both made Weezer's sound slicker (on 2005's Make Believe and the new disc) and introduced Cuomo to Vipanassa meditation, which seems to have set his mind on higher things. On his last album, Cuomo lamented, "I need to find some peace." On Weezer’s final song, “The Angel and the One,” he’s found what he was looking for: "I feel a deeper peace / and that deeper peace is penetrating." 

The music is as epic as anything since the first Weezer album’s romantic reverie “Only In Dreams,” only this time, Cuomo chooses spiritual ecstasy over chasing chicks. 14 years ago, the culmination of Weezer’s desire was a dreamy prom slowdance; here, it’s precisely the opposite. “It’s not my destiny to be the one that you will lay with,” Cuomo coos. Instead, “there is a higher love” that he “would rather be obeying.” If it weren’t for the earnest Zen of it all, this could be a teen abstinence anthem, even as it soars into meditative guitar feedback and church organ collages. 

At first, “The Angel and the One” seems a weird ending for a record that begins with a handful of goofy tracks about rock stardom. But really, this is an album about the meaning of life, essentially Taoist in its calm acceptance of identity, aging, family, and even mortality.