Album Review

More than thirty years after Buddy Holly, Say It Ain't So and Undone - The Sweater Song turned Weezer into one of alternative rock's most unlikely institutions, Rivers Cuomo and company are still trying to figure out exactly what people want from a Weezer record. On The Gold Album, the answer seems surprisingly simple: just sound like Weezer.

That may sound obvious, but anyone who has followed this band knows it rarely is. Weezer's career has bounced from power pop to orchestral pop, electronic experiments, metal riffs, cover albums and the ambitious four-part SZNZ project. The Gold Album strips much of that away and returns to loud guitars, compact songs, big choruses and the strange mixture of confidence and insecurity that has always been at the center of Rivers Cuomo's songwriting.

The opening Say Yes establishes the direction immediately. The guitars are upfront, the melody arrives quickly and Cuomo sounds comfortable working inside the musical language Weezer helped establish three decades ago. Shine Again follows with another reminder of how effortlessly this band can turn a relatively simple melody into something that sticks around long after the song ends.

That ability remains Weezer's greatest weapon. Cuomo has spent decades studying the mechanics of pop songwriting, and at his best he can make a chorus feel both completely predictable and impossible to resist. Don't Make It Weird leans into the band's familiar combination of awkward humor and oversized guitars, while We Might as Well Be Strangers brings Wednesday into the picture and gives the record one of its more unexpected turns.

There is a looseness to The Gold Album that works in its favor. After some of the conceptual ambition surrounding Weezer's more recent projects, it is refreshing to hear the band concentrate on individual songs rather than forcing everything into a larger idea. Tracks such as C.E.O., Hoops and Nowhere sound like a veteran band rediscovering how much fun can be found in simply plugging in and playing loud.

The guitars are particularly welcome. Weezer has never completely abandoned the instrument, but there have been periods when the band's pop instincts pushed the crunch and distortion into the background. Here, the guitars once again provide much of the record's personality. Brian Bell, Scott Shriner and Patrick Wilson give Cuomo's melodies enough weight to prevent the album from turning into another overly polished pop exercise.

Still, The Gold Album does not completely escape the inconsistency that has followed much of Weezer's later catalog. Some songs feel immediately memorable while others settle into familiar territory without finding the melodic spark that separates great Weezer from merely competent Weezer. There are moments when the band's ability to imitate its own trademarks becomes almost too obvious.

That is the strange position Weezer finds itself in after more than three decades. Few bands have a sound this recognizable, but that also means every new record is inevitably compared with The Blue Album and Pinkerton. Those records have become such enormous parts of the band's history that almost anything Weezer releases is judged against music created when the members were still in their twenties.

The best approach to The Gold Album is to leave those expectations behind. This isn't another Blue Album, and it doesn't need to be. Instead, it is a good late-career Weezer record made by musicians who understand exactly what they do well: distorted guitars, huge melodies, strange lyrics and choruses designed to be shouted back from the crowd.

By the time The Show Must Go On, Up in the Clouds and The LA Sound bring the album toward its conclusion, there is a sense that Weezer has stopped worrying quite so much about reinventing itself. That may ultimately be the album's greatest strength.

The Gold Album isn't a dramatic new chapter for Weezer, nor does it reach the heights of the band's essential records. What it does offer is something arguably more valuable at this stage of their career: ten songs that embrace the qualities that made people care about Weezer in the first place. It is melodic, occasionally ridiculous, frequently catchy and powered by enough guitar crunch to remind listeners why this band has survived for more than thirty years.

For a group that has spent much of its career running toward and away from its own identity, The Gold Album sounds surprisingly comfortable in its own skin. It may not be pure gold from beginning to end, but there is enough shine here to make it another worthwhile entry in one of alternative rock's strangest and most enduring catalogs.