OK, Rivers… ok… I’m not sure at what point in your career you made the decision, “Who gives a f**k,” but I still find this stuff kinda strangely pleasurable.
I love Weezer, damnit.
Twenty albums in, and Weezer have made an album – “Weezer” or what will be now be called The Gold Album (their seventh “color” album, and first since 2019’s The Black Album) about a problem that has followed them for most of their career: and that is everyone wants Weezer to sound like Weezer, while it seems Rivers Cuomo keeps wondering whether he actually wants to.
That tension makes The Gold Album considerably more interesting than the phrase “return to form” suggests.
After the kind of elaborate SZNZ 4 EP’s-in-a-year project, the band seems to have deliberately stripped things back. They play like a band again: guitars with weight, drums that hit hard, and a looseness that has sometimes disappeared from Weezer’s more polished records.
And yes, it sounds very much like old Weezer. I thank the production of Kenneth Blume (aka Kenny Beats) throughout the record for that, I think. It’s ten songs at just under 33 minutes, which is perfect.
Rivers Cuomo and Weezer
This is the first Weezer album since The Red Album where Rivers has shared songwriting duties with his other bandmates.
The first song, “Say Yes”, is pure Rivers – with him singing “Everybody here’s gonna try and drag me down. Make me so scared that I’m never gonna wanna leave this town. Hide my head in the ground. Everybody here’s gonna make me feel so afraid. So I only think about how my ass is getting paid…And play the game.”
His guitar solo is absolutely Weezer-ific. Just great.
“Shine Again” was written by drummer and co-founder Pat Wilson (and is the first single to be released that was not written by Rivers). You can kind of tell. But the guitar work – the guitar climb-downs, especially – are great by Rivers.
I mean, the third song, co-written by Rivers and Pat, “Don’t Make It Weird”, deliberately flirts with, I guess, the kind of embarrassment we’ve come to expect (love?) from Weezer. With a lyric: “Some people call me ‘River’. And then they tell me that I don’t got any flow. It’s like they can’t see me. I’m standing right here though.” (Yeah, they don’t know him well enough to get his name right, yet still criticize him… I’m sure that now, by the age of 56, he’s used to it!). It’s a short, kinda fun song, so I’m fine with it.
“We Might as Well Be Strangers”
This is the standout.
The duet with Karly Hartzman of Wednesday introduces something The Gold Album badly needs: another perspective. The two voices approach the deterioration of a relationship from different emotional positions, turning what could have been another extremely competent Weezer power-pop song into something sadder and stranger.
It also demonstrates The Gold Album’s slight frustration: when Rivers stops trying to solve the problem of Weezer and simply writes something emotionally specific, he’s still capable of being wonderful.
Next…
The strangely key song is “C.E.O.”, perhaps the most revealing thing Rivers has written about his peculiar relationship with his own band.
The basic idea is funny: audiences want the familiar Weezer sound, Rivers knows they want it, and – as the man responsible for keeping this strange 30-year enterprise running – he has decided to give it to them.
Musically, it’s shameless. The spoken opening and explosive guitar entrance immediately recall “Undone – The Sweater Song” (As does the music video). Yet the self-plagiarism is so conspicuous that it becomes the subject of the song rather than merely its method.
That’s kind of The Gold Album in miniature – it’s Weezer imitating themselves while simultaneously commenting on the absurdity of Weezer imitating themselves.
They sound fantastic, but the lyrics remain… Rivers
And that’s where the album becomes more interesting.
There is “Up In The Clouds,” which is a lovely Weezer piece with great guitar work and lyrics like: “Hey everybody. Can you tell me what you’re still doing down there? My head is up in the clouds today. I’m really sorry.”
The nostalgia isn’t simply for The Blue Album’s sound. Increasingly, it feels like nostalgia for being Weezer before being Weezer became a job.
That comes beautifully into focus toward the end. “The Show Must Go On” and Brian Bell’s “The LA Sound” remember the early touring years – vans, bad venues, exhaustion, loading in and loading out – and somehow make those inconveniences sound enviable!
The older Rivers gets, the more interesting this subject becomes. The young Rivers wanted desperately to become a rock star. The older Rivers occasionally seems nostalgic for the period when he was still trying.
There are clunkers. Of course there are.
A Weezer album without at least three lyrics that make you stare at the speakers in disbelief would arguably constitute false advertising.
“Hoops” turns mundane middle-aged irritations into hard rock. “Nowhere” wanders into grouchy suburbanism.
They’re both still kinda fun – sorry. The strange thing about Rivers is that the terrible lines and brilliant melodies aren’t really separable anymore. His refusal to edit out the embarrassing thought is part of what makes him distinctive. For example, sometimes you’ll get a complaint about QR codes. (“Hoops”… “Bought a toaster just to make some toast. First I had to scan a QR code.”)
So, is it actually good?
Yes. Not, ok The Blue Album good. Not Pinkerton good. And I wouldn’t quite put it alongside OK Human as evidence that Weezer can still reinvent themselves. No way…
But it’s something different: an unusually successful late-career album by a band accepting what it is.
Rivers knows perfectly well that recreating 1994 is impossible. He’s 56, and really, Weezer is an institution, and the nerdy young band singing about garages and sweaters became a touring business decades ago! And beneath all the meta-commentary is something unexpectedly touching: four men getting back into a room, turning up their amplifiers, and discovering that playing Weezer songs together still feels pretty great.
That’s why the album’s nostalgia works. It isn’t really asking us to believe that it’s 1994 again.
It’s about remembering why 1994 mattered.
Best tracks: “Say Yes”, “C.E.O.”, “Don’t Make it Weird”, “We Might as Well Be Strangers”, “The Show Must Go On”, “The L.A. Sound”, “Up In The Clouds”
Skip: “Hoops”, probably “Nowhere” (though that might grow on me), “Shine Again”
Chris Garrod, August 25, 2026
7.75/10 — the most convincing straight-ahead power-pop Weezer record in years.
Buy/Stream (*pls buy*) from here: https://weezer.com