For a band famous for songs about youthful alienation, with titles like “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here,” naming an album “Everything Will Be Alright in the End” represents a pretty big step. But Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo says that change has been hard-won.
“We went through so many life stages, creative stages, interests, experiences, ups and downs, and we faced some deeply troubling realities,” he says of the years since their last album, 2010’s “Hurley.” After all of that, Cuomo says the lesson they learned is what led to the band naming their latest album title, “Everything Will Be Alright In the End.”
“I think really it’s just a way to put into one phrase with words the feeling you get from the album where over the course of the 41 minutes,” he says. “You go through quite a few different worlds and terrains and ultimately it feels triumphant by the time you get to the final chorus.” The band members are so happy about “Everything” that they’re playing every song from the album at each tour stop, though Cuomo assures us that older songs will be in the mix as well. Asked if playing those older songs still feel as personal to him as more recent efforts, Cuomo replies, “I feel like Weezer at its best is writing from a very deep, timeless and ageless place that I have no problems relating to. Even with our earliest songs, they feel like us.” That’s not to say the new album isn’t personal as well: “I’m always inspired by the emotional push and pull in my relationships and my daily life,” he says.
We ask him to explain the ominously-titled “Eulogy For a Rock Band.” The opening lines of the song are, “Goodbye heroes, you had a good run, 15 years of ruling the planet, but now your light’s fading.” He promises it’s not a critique about his own band, but was instead inspired by seeing one of his musical heroes. “A forefather who’s perhaps the biggest rock star of all time in one of the later stages of his career,” is all that he will allow. Though Cuomo is cagey about who the musician was, he does say the experience made him think about how “each successive generation is less familiar with his work and ultimately that means he and his life’s work are headed towards oblivion, and realizing that gosh, if that’s the fate of his work, then obviously that goes for the rest of us too.” But hey, everything will be all right in the end, right? Cuomo says keeping to that credo is what gives him the confidence to keep going as an artist.
“Even if we’re not 100 percent certain, that’s what we have to tell ourselves,” he says.
Venue change
The band will mostly be playing smaller club shows on the tour, which Cuomo is a big fan of. “Playing giant venues is great because it’s just such a spectacle from the stage to see 80,000 people, it’s awe-inspiring, but we also love playing for just a few people or a few hundred people, feeling them right next to us, right in front of us. They tend to be the most hard core fans and will sing every word at the top of their lungs and you know how much your music means to them, and that’s what every artist dreams of, and it’s the greatest feeling in the world.” If you go
The band has been selling out all those smaller venues, but for those lucky souls with tickets, here’s where you can see Weezer.
Philly:
10/25
The Trocadero
1003 Arch St.
Boston:
10/26
The Sinclair
52 Church St., Cambridge
New York:
10/27
The Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey St.
Getting back to the good life with Weezer
Emily Schur
