Weezer’s Blue, Green, Red, White, Teal, and Black eras are in the rearview. We’ve now reached Gold.
At midnight, Rivers Cuomo and Co. turned over a new leaf — gold leaf — with the release of their 20th studio album. The process behind the new, self-titled collection, the so-called Gold Album, was a blast from the past, an LP made the old fashion way.
Following a well-received 30th anniversary tour, the four band members got down to business in a rehearsal space in Orange County, Calif. Those sessions marked the first time Cuomo and Weezer’s drummer Pat Wilson had fleshed out the framework of a song since their first album, released back in 1994.
Klas Ahlund and Kenneth Blume (FKA Kenny Beats) came on board to produce the new body of work. Ahlund contributed a “more mathematical, stringent approach,” reps say, while Blume set about to make the “most violent Weezer album ever.”
The fruits of their OC labor, 10-tracks including the lead singles “Shine Again” and “We Might As Well Be Strangers” featuring Wednesday, the latter track performed live Wednesday night (Aug. 19) when the rockers stopped by NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“We hung out in a living room, actually, for months. All four of us. And just threw ideas out. It was really fun,” Wilson told Fallon of the new project.
“What you hear on the record is something that could only be created by humans coming together and being vulnerable and creating something together,” Cuomo added. “It just can’t be created by AI or a somebody on their own working on a computer or something.”
The band will support the new Gold Album with Weezer: The Gathering tour, getting underway in September with multiple stops across North America.
“The gathering has something to do with summoning sorcerers from all corners of the world to come into this,” Cuomo explained to Fallon. “And I think this tour is something like that. We’re summoning all the different kinds of Weezer fans from around the world to come rock out with us.”
Stream The Gold Album below.
