Weezer has already exhausted an entire rainbow of self-titled albums, from Blue and Green to Red, White, Teal, and Black, but still find a new way to shine on Gold.
Three decades in, Weezer are still figuring out what comes next by not overthinking things. Their answer, fittingly, begins in a rehearsal room. For their 20th album, Weezer, the band returned to Orange County following their sold-out 30th anniversary tour and stripped the process back to its essentials. Four guys in a room playing together, writing together, and finding the songs along the way. The result is arguably the band’s most collaborative record yet, with three of its four members contributing songwriting and Rivers Cuomo and drummer Pat Wilson working together on the foundations of a song for the first time since Weezer’s 1994 debut.
Produced by Klas Ahlund and Kenneth Blume brought distinctly different philosophies to the sessions, but both understood the need to preserve the chemistry of the band itself. Ahlund took a precise, almost mathematical approach, while Blume pushed for what he called “the most violent Weezer album ever.” There were no studio tricks, no pitch correction, no painstaking grid work. The drums were recorded with all four members playing live, as if they were still on tour. That’s what gives Weezer its rawness. Rather than attempting to recreate the band’s past, the album sounds like Weezer actively testing the machinery that made their best records tick in the first place.
The lead single, “We Might As Well Be Strangers,” featuring Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman alongside Cuomo, adds even more to the communal spirit. Meanwhile, another pre-album release track, “Shine Again,” points toward a record that understands Weezer’s history without becoming trapped inside it.
Across the album, Weezer turn their attention toward aging, legacy, and the strange experience of remaining a band long enough to become part of the cultural furniture. The jokes are knowingly meta, but the emotion underneath them is sincere. Thirty years after “Buddy Holly,” these are musicians confronting their own mythology while still sounding hungry enough to add to it. Weezer plays like an imagined greatest-hits collection from a band that hasn’t released those hits until now. It’s direct, restless, occasionally self-deprecating, and very much living and breathing. Three decades on, Weezer are still plugging in and simply enjoying the wonder of it all.