To make a deeply-incontrovertible statement: Weezer means a lot of things to a lot of people. Enough people to sell out Boston’s TD Garden, evidently. One of the great enduring American rock bands, they have spent the last 35 years shaping, then intersecting with, the landscape of music in the USA. Notably, 2026 bears the release of their 20th studio album, which – in Weezer fashion, they’ve self-titled for the seventh time, meaning this will go down as their Gold Album, named for the color dominating its album cover.
The band, fronted by Rivers Cuomo, opt for a lengthy video intro to their show, contextualizing the set the audience has been puzzling out up until this point. They’ve recreated a classic suburban California house, picket fence, mailbox to one side, and a couple pairs of shoes suspended on power lines overhead. And while the band certainly is synonymous with California – simply have a listen to ‘Surf Wax America’, which occurs early in the set – it’s worth a mention that Cuomo’s younger years included time on the eastern coast, particularly time at Harvard and Berklee. Late in the night when Cuomo modifies the lyrics of ‘El Scorcho’ to reference the Pixies, it’s hardly for show.
The tour is formally designated “Weezer: The Gathering” – not only a nod to the legendary card game, but also a reference to The Shins and Silversun Pickups, whom they’ve brought along for the ride. The pre-show video sees Weezer being summoned in a treehouse by a group of young kids, and when they take the stage, they pick up where the intro left off and walk through a gate in the picket fence to take their places onstage. As for any band with such a lengthy history, the night is a constant balance between nostalgic hits and newer material. Ahead of ‘C.E.O.’ Cuomo even jokes, “everyone just wants the classics” – but the conceit of a “Gold Cam” spotlighting audience members with glistening chains and hats keeps the fun going as they air some new tracks from Weezer (the Gold Album).
The band embraces pageantry and narrative for the course of the show. At one point they feign a “power outage” – a drumset inconspicuously gets assembled stage-right, but its purpose isn’t immediately revealed. Instead, the band enact a campfire scene – when Cuomo asks for a light, the audience fiddles with their flashlights, but an actual (controlled) fire appears up some steps stage-left. The band gets altogether quieter, but still fills the space of the arena, led at first by Cuomo on the Fender Rhodes. Next comes ‘In the Garage’, where he takes up the harmonica. The most poignant moment is when he comes to the front of the stage for the line, “No one hears me sing this song” – it’s almost comically inaccurate now, but the foundational pieces of Weezer canon truly do come from a place of weirdness and isolation. And in its rawest sense, that is the appeal of live music – the arena may be full, Cuomo may be a man of a respectable 56 years – but the missive he wrote to no one at the age of 23 will forever be adopted by people who find themselves feeling on the outside of the mainstream, creating worlds in their bedrooms, garages, et cetera that will hopefully one day be shared.
The second drum set finds Cuomo drumming for the timeless ‘Pork and Beans’, a funny title for someone who has essentially been a lifelong vegetarian. ‘Aloo Ghobi’ comes a bit later – the dish itself is also not really the point here – its refrain of “you are not alone” is much more relevant, judging by the crowd singing it back to the stage [worth noting though – aloo ghobi is honestly a fantastic dish.] Cuomo jokes before the next one that in “[19]96, critics advised against this song” – referencing ‘Pink Triangle’, another chronicle of a distinct youthful misstep and misunderstanding. He’s then joined briefly by Nikki Monninger of Silversun Pickups, who alights on a few songs, including ‘We Might As Well Be Strangers’, where she stands in for Karly Hartzman of Wednesday on the Weezer (Gold) track. As the band has carried on, Cuomo and company have been the utter opposite of isolationist, taking on collaborations, and even an entire album of covers in the form of Weezer (Teal).
The band’s final salvo is, in fact, all classics – a bit of Green, a bit of Pinkerton, but mostly the dearly-beloved Blue Album – none of these tunes need any introduction. It has always struck me as funny how the line “wrestle with Jimmy” in ‘Say It Ain’t So’ has become not only a huge crowd singalong moment, but something so memeable that there exist entire reworks of the song where every lyric is pitch-bent to fit that phrase – nothing so outlandish happens at the show, but my word is it still a loud refrain. A mailman comes to the long-dormant box at stage right and selects someone to play air guitar in the spotlight during ‘Buddy Holly’. Naturally, the subject obliges, and is projected thirty-feet high on the screens flanking the stage with the image macro: “YOU JUST GOT WEEZERED”. An army of pool floaties is readied for ‘Island in the Sun’, and then after all that, the night must reach its end. But for the Weezer faithful new and old – including myself, seeing them for the first time – they manage to make it a beautiful spectacle. They build around the hugeness of their success, but then re-factor it through the lens of a silly “house show” conceit – not with cynicism or labored retreads, but by embracing the best of the band: and that core is what has made Weezer such an everlasting proposition as a listener.
Pictures and words by Collin Heroux
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