Weezer Don’t Have to Fake It on The Gold Album: Review

If you told a casual fan that Weezer‘s 20th LP, widely dubbed The Gold Album, features a self-referential quiet-loud rocker intentionally structured as a “sequel” to 1994’s “Undone (The Sweater Song),” they might get more irritated than Leslie Jones in that Rivers Cuomo-centric SNL sketch.

“C.E.O.”’s concept admittedly doesn’t sound great on paper: It opens with a twinkling guitar arpeggio and overdubbed background chatter, echoing that Blue Album classic, and our songwriter wastes no time getting meta: “Cranking out another ’90s jam/ Wish I could do something new,” he speak-sings in the intro. “But nobody wants to hear that/ They just want the classics/ Can’t blame ’em, really/ There’s something special about your early shit.”

Find Weezer Tickets Here

The end result isn’t instant classic Weezer on par with that predecessor. But it’s heartening that everything about “C.E.O.” feels real — both in the lyrics, as Cuomo channels an artist’s struggle to push forward and “give the people what they want,” and in how the band mirrors that angst with an unfussy clean-to-fuzz, amps-in-the-room arrangement. It’s keeper-tier Weezer not because it chases the ’90s, but because it evokes the earnestness that made so much of the “Undone” era so compelling. (Plus, in Weezer world, a bridge section with a wicked, octave-layered guitar solo never hurts.)

Much of The Gold Album captures a similar spirit — of Weezer looking back at their career arc, musing about keeping the show on the road. It’s also their funniest, rawest, most musically spry album since at least 2014’s Everything Will Be Alright in the End — even Jones’ SNL character, who argued that “Weezer died when Matt Sharp left,” might jump back on the bandwagon.

These are the kind of Big Rock Opinions that few other bands seem to spark, and it’s pretty much been that way from the beginning — at least since the almighty Pinkerton, now approaching 30 years old, bloomed from mixed reviews to cult status to genuine “masterpiece” praise. Each record brings its own opportunity for a supposed redemption arc and “best since ____” pull quote (see: above), but Weezer simply just keep on Weezering: surprise-hit covers (a 2018 take on Toto’s “Africa”), lovely orchestral-pop detours (2021’s OK Human), a quadrilogy of seasonal-themed releases touching on everything from dance-rock to metal (the 2022 SZNZ project). Maybe in this scenario I’m just Matt Damon’s lifer-fan SNL character, but I consider most of the quartet’s post-Hurley work solid to great — they’ve managed to experiment with new styles while maintaining a solid song-by-song batting-average. Admirable stuff! But their latest color-coded LP scratches a deeper itch — channeling the vulnerability, hookiness, and genuine heaviness of their canonized early work.

As usual with Weezer, you can learn a lot by studying their credits. They’ve worked with a staggering amount of producers over the decades, but they seem to have struck a unique chemistry with their latest collaborators, Klas Åhlund (Robyn, Charli XCX, The Weeknd) and Kenneth Blume (Geese, Idles, Vince Staples). In a press statement, Blume shared a noble objective: making “the most violent Weezer album ever.” And they got pretty damn close — a notable accomplishment, given the rapturous ruckus of Pinkerton and 2002’s strangely underrated Maladroit. You feel that sheer power about 48 seconds into opener “Say Yes,” as feedback swells into geek-rock glory: power-chord fuzz, overdriven guitar leads, distorted bass, swaggering open-hi-hat drumming, and Cuomo’s ever-youthful falsetto. As a wise Weezer fan probably said upon first encountering “Dope Nose” or “Tired of Sex”: Ah, yes, that’s the shit.

Regardless of how they got there, the end result breathes in a way most modern Weezer albums haven’t — there’s the occasional tape hiss, slices of in-studio chatter, some organic tempo changes, a few moments of refreshingly sloppy timing. Call it Human —and OK With It. Given that warmth, it’s only fitting that they mostly kept the writing in-house this time out, with Cuomo’s bandmates way more involved in that part of the process: Drummer Patrick Wilson — who, it’s worth reminding, co-wrote Blue classics “My Name Is Jonas,” “Surf Wax America,” and “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” — is a clear MVP; he elevates every track with some of his most naturalistic, dynamic drumming, most notably the swaggering fills on “Shine Again.” (In addition to that one, he wrote or co-wrote four other tracks, including a delightful roast of modern-day inconvenience called “Hoops,” which builds to a massive fuzz swoon. Sample lyric: “Bought a toaster just to make some toast/ First I had to scan a QR code/ Where’s the jerk who built this hamster wheel?/ I’m gonna tell him exactly how I feel.”)

Guitarist Brian Bell also co-writes four songs — most notably “We Might as Well Be Strangers,” an anthemic Cuomo duet with Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman that climaxes with a heart-tugging, head-spinning rhythmic flourish. “The LA Sound,” meanwhile, salutes the bonding minutiae of an eager, youthful touring band — loading up the van, navigating clubs that “smell like piss,” snatching the headliners’ hummus plate while they aren’t watching, eagerly anticipating their next opportunity to melt some faces. It peaks, of course, with some horns-up harmonized guitar work — just as it should.

But these flourishes don’t land as nostalgia bait. They resonate because they’re lively and authentic, capturing the vibe of a great rock band leaning into being a great rock band.

“You can’t fake the real thing,” they sing as “The LA Sound” fades out. On The Gold Album, you can feel that they feel it.