Weezer’s brand new album sees them back with seminal Blue album producer Ric Ocasek. This back-to-basics collection of songs includes the new single ‘Back to the Shack’.

The band chose Ric Ocasek as the producer based on the feeling that he would best be able to return to “the sound and the vibe and the energy of where [the band] came from”, while also allowing them to “explore and try new things”. The band recorded the majority of the album in The Village, a recording studio located in Los Angeles, California. Bassist Scott Shriner described Ocasek’s production style as “very serious”, commenting that at one point the band considered featuring a whistling section in one of the songs, which Ocasek turned down.

Over 200 songs were considered for the album, with 20 being tracked and “a dozen or so” being chosen for the album. According to the album’s official press release, the album is “organized thematically around three groups of songs”. Cuomo described the album as dealing with three main themes: his relationship to others, his relationship to women and his relationship with his father, “with a new spin”. Drummer Patrick Wilson described the album’s sound as “bombastic, loose, kind of booming. [The] record sounds like it’s going to have the tight structure of the Blue Album with a little bit more abandon like Pinkerton”. The band also specifically noted that the album would feature less “modern pop production” than their previous two albums, Raditude and Hurley. The album’s first single, “Back to the Shack”, lyrically deals with the wish to return “to [the band’s] 1994 roots”, with Rolling Stone describing it as a “nerdy, self-referential […] guitar-heavy track”. Another song, “Eulogy for a Rock Band”, deals with the band’s relation to “the great rock bands that came before [them] as they are retiring […] We’re kind of in that spot now.” Entertainment Weekly reported that the album ends with an “ambitious three-part suite”, which includes the song “My Mystery”, which has since been changed to “Anonymous”. The suite was later revealed to be titled “The Futurescope Trilogy”.