Rivers Cuomo has always romanticized creating without an audience in mind. You don’t have to go that far back in the trajectory of Weezer’s self-titled and increasingly self-referential albums to dig up an example: “Way up here, no one can touch me/ I’m drifting like a lost balloon,” he sang on The Black Album’s ‘High as a Kite’, almost the exact sentiment that animates ‘Up in the Clouds’ from their new, Gold album. This time, it arrives towards the very end of an album that spends much of its runtime coming to grips with the nostalgia, dissatisfaction, and general weirdness of the band’s (and any large enough) fanbase, but mostly laughing it off: “Call it faith, call it denial/ Hey, who cares? We’ll play a while” is their call-to-arms after 2022’s divisive SZNZ EP series. And while they recruited TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek for their last self-titled album, here to revitalize their sound is Kenneth Blume, who cemented his post-Kenny Beats legacy with Geese’s Getting Killed last year and sought to produce “the most violent Weezer album ever.” Big words from someone who just helmed (as with Gold, along with Robyn collaborator Klas Ahlund) the new LP from post-hardcore outfit Show Me the Body, but though some of the lyrics are more passive aggressive than anything, the music – grungy, dynamic, and heavier even than Van Weezer – speaks for itself.
1. Say Yes
The opener doesn’t take long to throw a classic Weezer hook in your face, but its build-up has a strange way of reinforcing the theme of forced optimism: you can hear Cuomo alone with a guitar, eager to sing about just wanting to hide his head in the ground, before someone slips him a happy pill to “make me feel dumb if I just can’t seem to feel the thrill.” It is exciting to hear the band come alive with such crisp production, yet his anxiety is palpable through every verse and chorus, except perhaps when he slips into that emotion-squashing falsetto. If he’s gonna have to keep saying yes, at least let him be a little weird about it: “Like Yoko to John.”
2. Shine Again
A fierier kind of optimism rises on ‘Shine Again’, which lives up to Kenneth Blume’s ambition to produce “the most violent Weezer album ever.” The scorching guitars seem to even have an effect on Cuomo’s vocals as he sings about “nailing each task on my list” through greeted teeth. Yet the chorus is unequivocally sweet, a just-good-enough melody that deflates any real sense of tension.
3. Don’t Make It Weird
“Some people call me River/ And then they tell me that I don’t got any flow,” Cuomo sings on the chorus, but if the song’s awkward angst rubs you the wrong way, it’ll be just twenty seconds in, when he rhymes “know” with “yo.” The clunky lyricism is the point, of course, or else he wouldn’t go on to rhyme “be” with… “be.” But it’s the more sincere verse beginning with “Blinded by darkness/ I was starving as I picked at the carcass” that makes an otherwise throwaway track feel worthy of inclusion.
4. We Might As Well Be Strangers [feat. Wednesday]
There’s a strong case for this being the strongest Weezer single in at least a decade, even now that the excitement of an out-of-nowhere Wednesday feature has waned. Karly Hartzman’s voice does wonders for the track, elevating lines like “Is it still hedonism if you’re feeling miserable” and making “I was Nancy, you were vicious” sound playful rather than merely insane. It’s not just a vocal feature, either; Xandy Chelmis’ pedal steel graciously makes its way through. Misery loves company, after all.
5. C.E.O.
If the blatant echo of ‘Undone — The Sweater Song’ isn’t enough, the opening line spell out what ‘C.E.O’ is designed to sound like: an obligatory ’90s jam, sarcastic and half-baked. Yet it scans more like an excuse to make the cameo-heavy music video, making the song itself feel redundant in the context of the record.
6. Hoops
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the shortest song on the record is a hidden gem. Scrappy and straightforward, ‘Hoops’ sounds like the band “cranking out another ‘90s jam” with zero hang-ups, though it helps that Cuomo gets out of his own head lyrically, too, and his jokes land from the get-go: “Bought a toaster just to make some toast/ First I had to scan a QR code.”
7. Nowhere
After framing himself as a mad scientist and realizing it’s “getting me nowhere,” that last word carries onto the next song, one of two tracks solely written by Patrick Wilson: “I don’t wanna go nowhere” [my emphasis]. It’s a sun-dazed and fuzzed-up tune most satisfying for taking at least one bizarre left turn, both musically and lyrically, that offers some necessary context: “Why did they clear the trees just to put up some shit box condos?” You can feel the change in the air as the band leaps into the chorus, distortion threatening to swallow up Cuomo’s voice.
8. The Show Must Go On
In addition to Cuomo and Wilson, guitarist Brian Bell, general assistant Karl Koch, and co-producer Klas Ahlund are all credited as co-writers on ‘The Show Must Go On’, which tightly balances a beefy low end with one of the album’s shiniest melodies. Instead of letting the song end naturally around the three-minute mark, they let its remnants ring out eerily for a moment, as if the ghost of Geese is still hanging out in Blume’s studio.
9. Up in the Clouds
The disgruntled, self-aware anthems that dominate the album may be perfectly on-brand for Weezer, but euphoric dissociation fits them just as well: ‘Up in the Cloud’ strikes gold as the most dynamic cut on the record, showing its worth with a totally stripped-back arrangement before exploding into the stratosphere.
10. The LA Sound
The purpose of the album’s closer is more functional than any other track, as Cuomo and company declare: “We came to melt your face/ We’re gonna torch this place.” But if violence is the quality that’s brought to the surface throughout Gold, this isn’t a hit-and-run situation – the band stretch the arrangement out to its limits, piling on “whoa-oh”s and guitar licks in allegiance to “the real thing.” The real Weezer, certainly – and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s on an album sort of about losing your way that they truly sound like themselves.