I couldn't believe it either. I mean, it doesn't shock me that Weezer has signed a new record contract but, seeing that anyone might have ever referred to Weezer as an indie band as the headline above (which also appeared on the press release that was emailed to me) implies was enough to make me do a double-take.
It's true though, this morning it was announced that Weezer has officially inked a new deal with the largest indie label in the world, Epitaph Records, with a new album, entitled Hurley, to be released on September 14, 2010.
I'll give you a second to absorb that.
The move comes after some speculation on what might be happening with Weezer when a succession of demos and rarities collections were issued between 2007 and 2008 and were further fueled by the stylistically disparate releases of The Red Album and Raditude in '08 and '09, As a result of those albums, fans were left wondering what could possibly be coming next from Weezer, and this news provides the first clues. “So far we've had a really good creative collaboration with Brett Gurewitz and the other people at the label, and I'm looking forward to collaboration with other like-minded alternative music fans at the label,” Rivers Cuomo recently told the Los Angeles Times. “We all felt that the really intense, raw emotional side of Weezer is what's going to make everyone the happiest at this moment,”
Produced by Cuomo and Shawn Everett (Raditude, Phantom Planet, Ozomatli), Hurley is a high-energy rock album that wastes no time with the first single “Memories,” an impassioned look at nostalgia with fast tempo, buzzing guitar riffs and killer hooky chorus. Subsequent songs include soon-to-be fan favorites “Ruling Me,” “Trainwrecks,” “Hang On” and “Brave New World.” In addition, Cuomo picks up an acoustic guitar for the reinvented power ballad “Unspoken” and the raw Sixties influenced, Mac Davis co-written “Time Flies.” The classic Weezer sound is reignited with songs like “Smart Girls,” “Run Away” and the quirky “Where’s My Sex?”
Fueled by a newfound sense of independence, Hurley finds the band making some of the most powerful and adventurous music of its' storied career.
“Weezer's become a totally kick-ass live band, and when we were making Hurley you could just hear the sound of people going into the studio, pressing 'Record' and rocking," Cuomo says. "There’s just an insane amount of energy on songs like ‘Where's My Sex' or 'Memories.'"
Known for their quirky album artwork, Weezer have done it yet again. The cover of Hurley features a simple close-up of actor Jorge Garcia, which fans of the Lost series will no-doubt find perplexing.
"We struggled super hard trying to come up with an album title, trying to find some kind of phrase that summed up the whole aesthetic behind the album: 'Heavy Mental,' 'Smaller Than Life,'" Cuomo recently told Spinner.com. "I was coming up with all kinds of stuff, but ultimately, we just went with some random word that doesn't really have anything to do with anything. I just loved this photo of Jorge Garcia – it just had this amazing vibe. We didn't want to do a fourth self-titled record and we knew people would refer to it as 'the Hurley record' even if left it without that title, so we just called it 'Hurley.' No words are on the cover because all we wanted was his amazing face."
This fall marks a new album and new beginnings for one of the most accomplished and genre defining modern rock bands. Stay tuned to www.weezer.com and www.epitaph.com for up-to-date news and information about Hurley and the band’s soon to be announced Fall tour.
Will Hurley be the album that lays all the wonderment in fans to rest finally? Find out on September 14.
Artist:
www.weezer.com/
www.myspace.com/weezer
Album:
Hurley comes out on September 14, 2010. Pre-order it on Amazon , or direct from Epitaph .
