Weezer has always had a thing for concept records, whether they’re imagining “the Beach Boys gone bad” (2017’s Pacific Daydream), doing a set of beloved old radio hits (2019’s The Teal Album), getting in touch with their quasi-sensitive side (2021’s OK Human) or paying tribute to the Eighties metal greats (that same year’s Van Weezer). For their 20th LP, technically self-titled but also known as The Gold Album, the concept is at once highly ironic and gloriously straightforward: a Weezer record that sounds like a classic Weezer record. “There’s something special about your early shit,” Rivers Cuomo intones — simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and heart-on-sleeve — at the opening of “C.E.O.,” a highlight anthem that sounds unmistakably indebted to their own 1994 classic “Undone (The Sweater Song).” The sentiment set the table for a record that often suggests what might’ve happened if the band had released a transitional album in 1995, between their debut 1994 alt-rock smash The Blue Album and their 1996 emo-adjacent masterpiece Pinkerton. Weezer’s Gold is, in fact, Weezer gold.
The band described the organic process behind the album as “less talk, more rock.” You can hear the poker-faced detachment that often defines their music falling away on the album opener, “Say Yes,” which shares a title with a 1997 tune by indie-folk icon Elliott Smith. Cuomo starts off in a malaise of cynical self-doubt. “Everybody here’s gonna make me feel so afraid/So I only think about how my ass is getting paid,” as the rest of the band underscores his uncertainty with a drolly ominous lurch. But the song takes off into a chorus as catchy as great Weezer oldies like “Buddy Holly” or “The Good Life,” with lyrics about turning the ritual of cranking out yet another automatic alt-rock banger into an affirmation of joy.
That freewheeling feeling is all over The Gold Album. Working with producer Kenny Beats (whose credits include Rico Nasty, Vince Staples, and Geese’s Getting Killed), the band sounds more garage-rock-y than usual, often rooting its songs in thick, bottom-heavy guitars that are more desert-rock than power-pop. So when they switch from growling riff to golden chorus on “Don’t Make It Weird” or “Shine Again,” the visceral payoff hits deeper than it would on a more run-of-the-mill Weezer disc. On the feelings-first “We Might as Well Be Strangers,” the guitars burn and wail as Cuomo rhymes “debating Nietzsche” with “how much I need ya,” and shouts it out alongside ace belter Karly Hartzman of Wednesday, one of the bajillionty bands who grew up in Weezer’s long shadow.
Cuomo spends a lot of the album chewing over a middle-aged indecisiveness that mirrors the journey of his fans, adding a drolly poignant tinge to a warmly familiar sound. “Hoops” is an agro complaint that begins “Bought a toaster just to make some toast/First I had to scan a QR code.” Preach, brother. On “Nowhere,” Cuomo proffers the NIMBY protest “Why did they clear the trees just to put up some shitbox condo?” over a churning, fuzzbomb riff, coming up with one of the best Cali-rock combos of his vaunted career: the anti-sprawl spirit of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” set to the wide-open sludge of Kyus.
Naturally for a band that’s often made poker-faced self-awareness its emotional safe space, the album’s centerpiece moments are about how tapping their bedrock sound can trigger feelings about rock itself — does it still feel real? Are we just going through the motions? Does that difference even really matter? “C.E.O.” contrasts innocent images of tinkering with his guitar in his teenage bedroom with the honest reality of cranking out the same old Nineties tunes for his corporate paymasters, navigating the tension between his “mad professor” indulgences and the need to “keep the rocket in the sky.” (The everyday fan listening along at home is invited to insert “kids’ college fund” or “401(k)” for “rocket in the sky.”) He’s not the first guy to make this observation, but the song’s gilded-grunge charm makes the sentiment stick.
The album-closing “The L.A. Sound” is The Gold Album’s nostalgic coup de grace. Written by guitarist Brian Bell, it’s a sweet remembrance of what it’s like to be a baby band grinding out long overnight van drives from crappy club to crappy club, winning over new fans one tiny little show at a time. “We came to melt your face/We’re gonna torch this place,” the band sings over the kind of candied alt-rock chug Weezer blew up with more than 30 years ago. This band has been putting its own sidelong spin on rock rituals since “In the Garage,” back in the Blue days, and they do it with real affection here too. Turns out, after all of these years, Weezer being Weezer is still a good look.
