Weezer returned to its roots in the mid-2010s, heading “back to the shack” with Everything Will Be Alright in the End, an album that disregarded Weezer’s trashy, often-times-embarrassing foray into watered down pop rock in the 2000s. The White Album followed, which was decisively a pop rock effort, but with enough urgency and raw emotion recycled from its predecessor to eventualise as the best Weezer album since the ‘90s. Regardless, these cycles, these returns to form, seem to begin with an Everything Will Be Alright in the End (my way of ignoring the genuinely great OK Human as a trailblazer for a comeback) regardless of how long the form lasts, and The Gold Album borrows the same ideals as the group’s 2014 album, and indeed, returns Weezer to form.
Weezer never stopped being a band with heavy metal distortion but otherwise pop sensibilities, but its best moments cease to water down the emotional, human validity of its art, its melodies, its presentation, opting on The Gold Album not for silly singles (a Beverly Hills type) or anything too cutesy, but honest-to-God alternative rock, believably built in a garage or similar space before being ironed out by Klas Ahlund and Kenneth Blume, the latter of whom is having a great 2026. How do you allow your music to retain integrity? How do you allow your music to sound like it has retained integrity? First, let it form from light collaboration and authentic human bonding; Rivers Cuomo allotted the other members of Weezer far more input than usual, allowing for a group effort in which all is played and planned intuitively. Secondly, allow your recording setup to be as authentic as possible; the reason why The Gold Album doesn’t sound withheld or restrictive is because it was recorded directly to tape, with its massive amplification stemming not from any over-the-top studio meddling, but a small amp with its gain turned allll the way up for maximum noise – no digital tampering, no AI, all life, all joy.
It’s funny what such a sense of rawness can achieve. I never thought I’d hear a Weezer lyric like “some people call me River, and then they tell me that I don’t got any flow” (Don’t Make It Weird) and respond with a hearty “hell yeah”, or Hoops’ Snoop Dogg reference (he even mentions hoes) for that matter. A sense of explosivity, alongside some wonderfully cutting melodies, adds something alternative to the axis progression that We Might as Well Be Strangers opts for, sort of like how My Name Is Jonas, No One Else and Pork and Beans all used fun compromises to accommodate the same, all-too-familiar chord progression. They’ll probably win a Grammy for it. The Show Must Go On’s melodic ranting could’ve sounded a little too much like an Achy Breaky Heart, but it’s just too fierce. And making a pastiche of Undone (the Sweater Song) sounds frightening on paper, but C.E.O’s chorus is a giant that deviates from its meta commentary – they had to do something different with it, otherwise you’re just mocking legacy bands by becoming one.
But even if rubbing shoulders with Weezer’s infancy is something Rivers Cuomo would rather poke fun at, that is the result of The Gold Album, and it’s all the better for it. The LA Sound is an affirmed ode to the band’s early days, indicative of the friendship that makes the album what it is, chronicling small rock clubs that smell like piss, and long drives from city to city, exaggerating the heroic razzamatazz of rock n roll – “we came to melt your face / we’re gonna torch this place”. Let them be the heroes young aspirers vie to be, let them make great throwbacks like Shine Again, that range from far-out mixes of triumphant and threatening (via a chorus with sinister guitar fanfare like Satan playing the fiddle) to delicate contemplation with the sort of guitar licks Rivers was honing before the band was Blue. On The Gold Album, nobody is pretending they’re young or slick, but there is a youth in its presentation, its rawness, its constant buzz in the low-end of its rhythm guitars, its sheer ability to rock (and/or roll)
Best tracks – Shine Again – We Might as Well Be Strangers – C.E.O.
Rating – 8 out of 10
