WEEZER - Weezer (blue) Deluxe Edition (Universal)

The years have not been kind to this album. What was forgivably predictable about it during the second big wave of 'alternative' rock has gotten dated, and what was groundbreaking about it has become emo cliche. The proto-stalker lyrics of "No One Else" sit particularly badly with me now, though I kinda remember having the same problem in 1994. (I have a funny story about that, but it'll have to wait for the deluxe reissue of Pinkerton.)

And yet its high points haven't changed. Listening to "Undone" and "Say It Ain't So" I was reminded that while transmuting desperation and powerlessness into defiance has been a fashionable pastime for most of rock's history -- only the means and the clothes change -- actual desperation and powerlessness themselves haven't been. Weezer did a hard thing better than anyone could have expected; most people with nothing left to lose, contrary to popular opinion, just give up. You don't get the feeling that rock was going to save the young band here, either. I guess it's open to interpretation whether it did.

Bonus tracks: half live/demo/alt-mix versions of songs you already have, not worthless but missable. The other seven seem at least as good as the weaker album tracks ("Surf Wax America", I'm looking at you) and one just wouldn't stop reminding me of Boyracer. Too bad their perverse charm meant they never had to get better if they didn't want to.

MIRAH + BLACK CAT ORCHESTRA - To All We Stretch The Open Arm (Yoyo)

Mirah's second collaboration/time-filler since her last 'real' album. Billed as covers of kinda sorta not-exactly protest songs, an idea that Mirah's occasional outward-looking songs like "Monument" had me prepared to love.

The mix strikes me as all wrong, however. Black Cat Orchestra's usual gig is writing and playing new scores for old silent films. Whether they'd be good at that, I can't say; their parts don't sound live, exactly, but they sound like they were engineered to simulate a live performance in a room with mediocre acoustics. Mirah's voice sinks below the waves most of the time, and she sounds as though she sang these songs louder than she usually would, even if her voice is mixed quietly. Her voice loses most of its expressive power when she projects.

But is that the whole problem? She does a new version of "Monument" with the BCO here and (in my humble, hesitant opinion) scuttles it by varying the melody to no great purpose. I know very few of the songs here -- heard Leonard Cohen's "Story Of Isaac" once or twice, and I know "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" but only from the Pet Shop Boys -- so at the end of one listen I can't decide whether to trust what my untutored ears tell me about the mix, or to conclude instead that despite her other skills Mirah might not be a talented reinterpreter, even when it comes to her own old songs.