Cold and Damp: Difference between revisions

'''"Cold and Damp"''' is the eighteenth track on ''[[Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo]]''.

"Cold and Damp" is an example of Cuomo's songwriting style that he calls "[[Arbitrary-Progression-Distortion-open-Strum-Intro-Melody-Arrange]]." In the liner notes for ''Alone II'', Cuomo described the song as an attempt to de-personalize his songwriting.

{{Alone liner notes|By the beginning of 1999, I had not managed to write any songs in which I felt any confidence, despite having devoted almost all of my time and energy to the effort since August, 1997. My band-mates each were pursuing other projects. Weezer's manager and record company rep stopped calling me regularly. Friends and family grew distant. I encouraged the space so that I could be alone. I determined that with enough concentration and effort, I could analyze my way out of the predicament I imagined myself to be in, the predicament of "poor songwriting". For the first time since I was a teenager, I now allowed myself to analyze my writing process in detail. I began to think of my writing sessions as experiments from which I could learn whether or not they turned out good. I disciplined myself to write a steady stream of these song-experiments, giving each a number, and keeping a log of my work called "[[Catalog of Riffs|The Catalog o' Riffs]]." I analyzed a large number of writing methods, varying what seemed to be every possible facet of the process: the order of the steps (guitar, melody, lyric, beat, riff, etc.); the tempo; the feel; the level of distortion on the guitar; whether I was composing aloud or in my head; the time of day; my emotional state; whether I had eaten or not; the number of drinks I had imbibed, if any. My goal was to ascertain the one method by which I could write the best songs.

The music I produced cycled through various styles, from extremely abrasive to light and folky, but in accord with my new post-''Pinkerton'' values, almost none of the lyrics had any personal meaning. Many of the results appealed to me, but frustratingly, I did not feel satisfaction or confidence in any one of them for long. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, maybe I should write a song with personal meaning–after all, that was what had always worked for me in the past (in the sense that it had generated songs that I loved). But the relatively low sales and critical reviews of the uber-personal Pinkerton convinced me that I had to learn to write songs that worked without personal meaning; I had to construct songs that were so compositionally perfect that no one could deny them. This was how I saw Nirvana's and Oasis's songs, the lyrics of which seemed largely impersonal and incomprehensible to me. So I kept trying.

Song experiment #49, utilizing method "[[Arbitrary-Progression-Distortion-open-Strum-Intro-Melody-Arrange]]", produced a somewhat Oasis-sounding song, with its loping bar chords and bluesy solo. '''"Cold And Damp" (Track 18)'''