Review Summary: A strong showing that will give longtime fans what they’ve been craving.
Weezer’s
The Gold Album marks the 20th LP of the band’s illustrious career. To say that fans have endured ups and downs would be an understatement, as Weezer have careened between decade-long swaths of underachievement and dropping generational classics. The last albums of theirs that I would consider truly essential were 2014’s
Everything Will Be Alright In The End and 2016’s
The White Album (an honorable mention could go out to 2021’s
OK Human), so it’s been a while since the band has released an album that made me sit up and take notice. While
The Gold Album doesn’t quite reach the heights of
EWBAITE,
The White Album,
Pinkerton, or
The Blue Album, it still makes for one of their best records – possibly even top five in their discography depending on who you ask. That alone makes
Gold a worthwhile event for all Weezer fans.
They achieve success here the same way they always seem to – by returning to their roots. Just as Rivers sang on ‘Back to the Shack’ during 2014’s reputation reclamation – “Maybe I should play the lead guitar and Pat should play the drums” – it seems like the band has once more remembered what their main draw is on the heels of another meandering decade. This time, however, they seem considerably less happy about it – just listen to ‘CEO’, where Rivers sings, “Cranking out another nineties jam / Wish I could do something new, but nobody wants to hear that / They just want the classics / You can’t blame 'em, really / There's something special about your early shit / I gotta grow up and be a real adult / Stop complaining and give the people what they want.” Nobody tell Rivers that if his new ideas were as good as his old ones, they wouldn’t have this dilemma – but still, a grumpy Cuomo crafting cynical rock tunes typically means a good time for listeners, and
The Gold Album is no different. Opener ‘Say Yes’ commences with slow percussion that gradually ticks up the momentum before exploding into the band’s trademark dense, grungy guitars. Lead single ‘Shine Again’ feels like it could have come directly from the
White era – it’s Rivers’ best vocal performance on this album, and it possesses one of the most memorable pre-choruses of Weezer’s entire career. ‘We Might As Well Be Strangers’ features indie darlings Wednesday and seems like a throwback lyrically to the band’s most endearing nerd culture days: “Happy birthday, thanks for the valium / And thank you for the stack of dirty magazines / We lounged around, debated Nietzsche”. No matter where you turn on
Gold, you’ll find vintage Weezer.
On its face,
Gold is not quite as memorable, energetic, or catchy as some of the other band’s very best works – but what it
is is very consistent. For instance, there is nothing particularly stirring about the slightly repetitive ‘Hoops’ or the cliched ‘The Show Must Go On’, but the band delivers with a fury and Rivers sounds revitalized even in his delivery of well-worn phrases. Even stalwart fan favorite albums like
Everything Will Be Alright In The End had their fair share of tracks that simply didn’t stack up, but
Gold avoids pitfalls altogether by delivering one of their most enjoyable front-to-end listens. The exciting peaks may be dwindling just a little bit, but where youth is perhaps fading, wisdom is lifting their floor.
It's not until the final track that Weezer reveal the ace up their sleeves. ‘The LA Sound’ is a superb conclusion featuring one of the band’s best guitar solos in recent memory, and it also brings the theme of aging/rehashing glory days full circle – revealing with a wink that, perhaps, Weezer knew what they were doing all along: “You can't fake the real thing.” With
The Gold Album marking the band’s 20th LP (if you count the various
SZNS releases), it’s clear that they wanted to do the milestone justice. I’m not going to pretend that this is their best album, but it is a strong showing that will give longtime fans what they’ve been craving. Sometimes, at this point in a band’s career, all you need to do is avoid the fool’s gold – Weezer’s
The Gold Album is the real thing, and as Rivers stated, that’s not something you can fake.
