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Weezer - Weezer: The Red Album

'The Red Album' offers some of Rivers Cuomo's most personal work on tracks such as 'Heart Songs', where he reminisces about the music wafting out of the radio growing up, name-checking everyone from Gordon Lightfoot and Eddie Rabbit to ABBA, Devo, Pat Benatar and Quiet Riot, and the playful childhood romp, 'Everybody Get Dangerous' ,''I didn’t really tip cows for fun, but my friends did,'' he says.

''We've grown as a team,'' Rivers says about the recording process, which started out with producer Rick Rubin at a pair of Malibu studios, then continued with the band on their own before they teamed up with Garret 'Jacknife' Lee for the first single, 'Pork and Beans,' and 'Troublemaker.'

''We tried to branch out instrumentally and with the arrangements,'' says Pat, who played guitar and synthesizer on 'Automatic,' a song he wrote and sang. ''Just get a little more open with the sounds, not quite so close and dense.''

Influences were plentiful in the making of the new album. ''I was listening to a lot of ‘90s hair metal when I came up with 'Cold Dark World','' says bassist Scott Shriner who wrote the music and traded vocals with Rivers on the song.

'The Red Album' aka 'Weezer' shows those dreams coming true, not just for Rivers, but the rest of the band.