Patrick Wilson thinks Weezer’s new album “is the best happy medium” of the Blue Album and Pinkerton.
The Buddy Holly drummer, who is one of the group’s remaining founding members alongside frontman Rivers Cuomo, has opened up about what fans can expect from the band’s latest self-titled album, and how it compares to their first two records in the mid-1990s.
He told Rolling Stone magazine: “What’s great about the Blue Album is there’s no fat on any of it.
“Pinkerton is so bombastic and just explosive, and the Blue Album is just so focused. I really feel like this is the best happy medium of both of those.”
For the recording sessions, Patrick insisted he didn’t want to play drums with a click track, which is a rarity in the modern landscape.
He explained: “So much music now is just programmed and so compressed, and I instantly don’t care when I hear it.
“You get a certain kind of tightness when you’re not playing along to a click track.
“Not to compare myself to [drummer] Clyde Stubblefield, who’s an obvious genius, but James Brown recordings are tight in a way that quantised music is not tight. It breathes and moves, but it’s just so together.”
For the Gold Album, Weezer worked with Swedish producer Klas Åhlund, who has worked with Ghost, and Geese collaborator Kenny Blume.
The latter had a big influence on the guitar sounds for the new record, which was shaped using a small Gibson amp from the 1940s.
Rivers recalled: “It looks like something you’d buy in a Sears catalog back in the mid-20th century.
“But if you turn it up all the way, it sounds brutal.
“It’s actually quite a bit like what our guitars sounded like before we made the Blue Album, before we started working with Ric Ocasek. It felt like coming home.”
Bassist Scott Shriner, who joined back in 2001, revealed that Blume’s goal was “the most violent Weezer” the band have ever released.
He added: “Kenny brought this kind of educated-thug vibe. He’s six-foot-seven, big solid dude, very physically intimidating — and I just appreciate that.
“This guy’s a real force, he’s got the knowledge to back it up, and he’s a massive Weezer fan. In his words, he wanted to make the most violent Weezer record ever.”
The 10-track LP is the first LP from the band – made up of Rivers, Patrick, Brian Bell and Scott – since 2021’s Van Weezer, and their 16th studio album overall.
The record, the latest in their colour coded series which includes the Blue, Green Red, White, Teal and Black self-titled LPs, will drop on August 21, shortly before The Gathering Tour gets started the following month.