Weezer are not looking to create high art. They are the only crowd-pleasing rock band from the past thirty years still left on the touring circuit. I had limited knowledge of the tour before entering Moody Center on September 27th; what I had seen was an Instagram reel where Rivers Cuomo, the band’s frontman, planted the band’s flag on a moon landing stage set.
“One small step for man, one giant leap for Weezer-kind.”
Though I was up in the nosebleeds, there was plenty of Weezer-kind on display. Behind me, there was one couple nuzzling each other and screaming all of the lyrics (Pinkerton being their favorite album). In front of me was a father and mother, scolding their kids and snapping at them for standing up while dancing to “Beverly Hills.” It was fun for the whole family.
When The Flaming Lips, the opener, came on, I cheered. I had grown up with the band on the Spongebob movie soundtrack and through their two most lauded albums, The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Wayne Coyne’s voice has aged gracefully, but his constant pleas to the audience to clap and sing along before - and even during - some of their hit songs came across as less ironic and punk, and more desperate.
Weezer killed throughout the entire show, even during songs that only die-hard fans knew the lyrics to. The audience quieted during the theatrical sections in between songs, displaying retro 3D models of aliens flying around monochromatic planetoids.
The “Buddy Holly” riff was present. Their eponymous 1994 Blue Album was the focus of the set, but most of the audience danced and head banged to their sophomore album, Pinkerton. Rivers flaunted a pick slide during a solo, and at last, I felt I was at the big rock n’ roll show that movies and TV shows had promised.
“Undone” stood out as the most interesting live performance of the night. Rivers became a showman, letting the audience fill in the lyrics during some of the choruses. His self-pitying whine has tapped the Id of the nation. Despite the variety in material across Weezer’s 30 year catalog, the band sounded exactly as they do on their studio albums. It was also extremely well mixed, jumping from muddy grunge-inspired tracks to dead-silent mid-2000s cuts. They were all well-structured rock songs, typically up-tempo. The night ranged more in dynamics than anything else. How quiet the guitars were told the audience how far from the ‘90s the piece was written.
I went into the concert trying to avoid the thought that I am, in fact, a Weezer fan. My friends were always playing their 2021 album, OK Human, in high school. I bought the blue album on CD as a gift for one of these friends, but ended up giving it to him a month later. In the meantime, I used it on my clock radio as an alarm. I woke up every morning to the first thirty seconds of “Undone”. I thought I was too smug, smart, and interested in jazz to be enjoying Weezer in public. Sure, maybe I wasn’t as big of a fan as the people around me, but I still bought a T-shirt and had a solid time at a rock show. I suppose finding that comfort in being a nerd was what the night was all about.
