Weezer Channel Sixties Pop on Fall Disc ‘Hurley’
Less than a year after Weezer released Raditude, Rivers Cuomo and Co. are already putting the finishing touches on their next LP, Hurley, which is due September 14th. “We just started mixing, so we’ll be done in a week or two,” Cuomo tells Rolling Stone. “The way our operation has evolved, we tour for two weeks at the most and then we’re back home and we can get in the studio during the week. It keeps me in top shape, performance-wise, because I’m always getting in front of a crowd and yet I can still be in the studio and come up with new things.”
On Raditude, Cuomo reached out to the All-American Rejects, Butch Walker, Dr. Luke and even Lil Wayne for collaborations. This time around, the band teams with a fleet of songwriters, including Ryan Adams and Mac Davis, who penned Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto.” Cuomo says he approached Davis on the recommendation of a mutual friend, and the pair worked on a track called “Time Flies,” a “classic Sixties pop song with huge crunchy guitars.” Cuomo also has a message for fans who weren’t fond of Raditude‘s “Can’t Stop Partying”: “There’s no Lil Wayne on it.”
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Instead, Hurley will focus on the melodies and major chords of traditional ’60s pop. In addition to the planned first single “Memories,” other new tracks include “Ruling Me” and “Hang On,” another pop-rock track that “sounds like Frankie Valli but mixed with Metallica guitars.” There’s also “Smart Girls,” Cuomo’s ode to all the girls that proposition on him on Twitter. “I was really getting into Twitter a year ago, and suddenly there were all these really hot girls that were hitting me on Twitter. I was like, ‘Where’d all these hot girls come from now that I’m totally married?’ ” “Hot Girls” eventually turned into “Smart Girls,” which Cuomo compares to the Beatles’ “Back in the U.S.S.R.” in the sense that it sounds like someone else writing a “cheesy Beach Boys type of song.”
After parting ways with their longtime label Geffen/Interscope, Weezer will release Hurley — which may be named after the portly Lost character — through California-based punk label Epitaph. “At this moment in our career, it feels like we don’t need a major label, and the major label culture isn’t inline with our values,” Cuomo tells RS. “We like [Epitaph head] Brett Gurewitz and it feels like a smaller and more appropriate operation for what we like doing at the moment.”
For more on Hurley, keep an eye out for our interview with Rivers Cuomo in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.