Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo spoke about his plans for the band’s future — now that they have completed their one—year project “SZNZ” – and the melancholy he feels being in “this strange intermediate phase” without a new record on the cards. .
The band released the fourth and final installment of the “SZNZ” series, “Winter”, on December 21 (the first day of the title season in North America). It followed the EP “Spring”, “Summer” and “Autumn” and featured a more thoughtful, emo-inspired palette of sounds and themes. Speaking to Consequence, Cuomo explained that he sought to focus on a certain emotion to represent each season, “and for winter it was sadness.”
About how this affected the musicality of the EP, Cuomo said: “The initial inspiration was that I wanted to try to incorporate some styles of singers and songwriters of the 90s era, such as Elliot Smith, acoustic fingerprint and just warmer acoustic sounds.
“For our previous album, Autumn, we were going to use dance rock, like Franz Ferdinand, and it had more synthesizers and guitars, and we thought it would be a good contrast to choose something very warm and acoustic. “of course, mixed with the gigantic sound of a Weezer guitar.”
Now that the latest album “SZNZ” has been released, Cuomo admitted that he feels a kind of “postpartum depression”, not knowing where the band will go in the next era. “It always happens after we finish working on an album,” he said, noting that “SZNZ” has “really taken up most of my time in the last couple of years.”
The singer and guitarist continued: “It was incredibly pleasant to work on this. And suddenly, it’s all over now. And it’s not in my hands. And it seems premature to me to just move on to the next one, although I can do it. So I’m in some weird intermediate phase where I don’t know who I am and what I should be doing. So, sorry, I think it’s not as positive as I should be feeling right now!
As for what Weezer can expect in the near future, Cuomo teased that the band “will have a big tour announcement coming soon.” About why they didn’t go on a headlining tour for several years, he explained: “For the last five to seven years we have been continuing to prepare for our big headlining tour.
“And then, just as we’re about to put it together, something else pops up, like, ‘Hey, do you want to be part of the Hella Mega Tour and tour with Green Day and Fall Out Boy and perform in stadiums? You just have to play 60 minutes, but it’s going to be a great opportunity to win new fans, and it’s going to be fun to work with these other bands,” and then we’re like, “Oh, okay, yeah.” I think we should do it! It sounds funny.’
“And then year after year goes by like this, and we still haven’t played a big headlining tour. But we’re going to make an announcement that will fix it all.”
Initially, Weezer was supposed to replace “SZNZ” with a five-week Broadway residency, but this was canceled earlier this year due to low ticket sales. However, fans in Arizona will be able to see the band live at the Innings Baseball Festival next February, where they will perform alongside musicians such as Green Day, Eddie Vedder, The Black Crowes and The Offspring. They will also perform at the Kentucky Railbird Festival in June.
Elsewhere at Camp Weezer, the band is currently preparing to perform a tribute to The Beach Boys on television. In his interview with Consequence, Cuomo said about this project: “We are now figuring out which Beach Boys songs we want to cover, and, my God, it’s incredibly fun. It’s so nice to play and sing these songs. And I remember how much I used them as a model when I first started writing songs for Weezer.”
