There was at least some hubris in Weezer’s 30th anniversary Blue Album tour announcement. Openers the Flaming Lips and Dinosaur Jr. are more than potential show-stealers, they’re established headliners in their own right. How do you follow that? You drop a giant curtain to reveal a Weezer-branded spacecraft. It seemed instantly clear at the tour opener in Saint Paul, Minn., on Sept. 4 that Weezer have reached new heights as an arena band.
After a countdown where an Xcel Energy Center full of voices screamed “5, 4, 3, 2, 1,” the vessel took flight into the rafters, leaving a trail of pyro in its wake. It revealed Weezer’s four members in NASA-esque jumpsuits gripping their instruments. The stage was covered in space boulders; periodically, small planets and UFOs would hover above their heads. A giant screen behind them showed a mission through the CGI stars. The narrative goes something like this: Sci-fi space heroes Weezer need to make it to the distant Blue Planet, which is facing an ecological crisis. The only solution is to travel there and perform the debut album they released 30 “lightyears” ago.
It’s a deeply goofy and campy premise, but which show do you want: a straightforward, buttoned-up, front-to-back full-album concert, or a ridiculous Sixties-television-aping space opera featuring a Weezer concert? This show feels like the meeting point between the guided narrative of Disneyland’s Star Tours and the rock & roll theatrics of an Iron Maiden show. At one point Rivers Cuomo, who had been shredding effortlessly through his greatest hits for over an hour, revealed that he was an alien from the Blue Planet. My guy literally did the Muppets From Space plot. This is the Weezer arena show we want.
More than just fun and absurd scene-setting, the narrative guided a setlist that led gradually to the Blue Album. It’s savvy work, opening with songs like “Pork and Beans” and “Hash Pipe” instead of launching right into the Blue Album. Everybody came in expecting the full-album treatment, so to instead open with a mini-eras block was an invigorating surprise. And of course, all of the songs soundtracked some space-narrative CGI stuff on the jumbotron. Red Album songs were played as red planets whipped by on the screen behind them. “Island in the Sun,” in this tour’s context, is about an island literally inside a sun.
“We are currently marooned in an asteroid belt,” a CGI robot told Rivers Cuomo. “Hmm,” he responded, “it looks familiar. Which asteroid belt?” After a beat, the robot replied, “The Pinkerton Asteroid Belt, of course.” The crowd howled as the stage was bathed in pink light. The band performed a block of Pinkerton songs including “Why Bother?” and “Pink Triangle.” Weezer’s playing was airtight. The performances were exceptional throughout the set, guitar solos and vocal harmonies hitting just right every single time. It’s impressive how this band can stay so faithful to their source material decades into their tenure.
Weezer and their spaceship in Saint Paul (from left, Patrick Wilson, Brian Bell, Rivers Cuomo, and Scott Shriner).
Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
By the time the band arrived at the Blue Planet, the crowd was ravenous for the album they paid good money to experience. An adult man in my section excitedly screamed, “It’s the Blue Planet!” Cuomo lamented that the planet was dying. “We need the Blue Album to bring it back to life!” The crowd screamed. “That’s one small step for Weezer, one giant leap for Weezerkind!” Another scream for this bad, unabashedly cornball line. Why? Because everybody knew that once Cuomo planted the Weezer flag into the Blue Planet (there was a literal prop flag), they would launch into “My Name Is Jonas.”
The Blue Album section of the show really highlighted just how much that record feels like a greatest hits album without skips. When Cuomo hit the climactic guitar solo in “Buddy Holly,” it was a triumph. “Say It Ain’t So” encouraged the unbridled scream-singing of a sea of humanity, and so did “Undone (The Sweater Song).” Outside all the pageantry, this is just a rock band that’s exceptional at playing their best-loved songs.
And again, all of this happened after sets from two unbelievable live bands. Dinosaur Jr. kicked the show off with a tight 30 minutes. It definitely felt truncated, but Lou Barlow thrashed around more than anybody else who took the stage that night, screaming “Mountain Man,” from the band’s 1985 debut album. Sure, there weren’t many songs in their set, but the ones they did play were “Just Like Heaven” and “Freak Scene” and “Feel the Pain.”
With Dinosaur Jr. offering zero banter and Weezer only speaking in highly scripted narrative beats, the Flaming Lips were the perfect counterweight — loose, congenial, conversational. Wayne Coyne took a moment to tell the Saint Paul crowd about the time the band handed Prince’s bodyguard a stack of their CDs as a gift to the icon. “As we were backstage after he played, his bodyguard came up to us and he had the stack of CDs and he said, ‘Prince doesn’t want these,’” Coyne said, calling it the greatest diss in history.
The Oklahoma City band announced that they were recording that night’s set, which may explain why they began more gradually and subtly with “The Spark That Bled” and “Suddenly Everything Has Changed.” They built to their bubblier hits like “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and “She Don’t Use Jelly,” though the undisputed highlight of their performance was a twinkling-then-raucous cover of Madonna’s “Borderline.” Since they weren’t the headliners, it wasn’t the most maximal Flaming Lips show that’s ever been thrown. But what they lacked in humans walking around in bubbles and confetti cannons, they made up for with giant inflatable robots, people dancing around as huge eyeballs, and lasers.
Their set ended with a special request from Weezer — that the Flaming Lips end their set each night with “Do You Realize??” beneath an inflatable rainbow. Wayne Coyne encouraged the crowd to take advantage of what he called a “built-in moment.” Church-style, he told the crowd to turn to their neighbor and express their love. “I love you, guy,” said a total stranger two seats down from me.
And it was a moment, a bit of emotional catharsis before the crowd got raucous and the headliners got silly. With the lights up before Weezer came out, huge sections of the crowd could be seen wearing blue shirts. Whether they’re making you cheer for the survival of a fictional planet, ripping through “Surf Wax America,” blasting the crowd with blue confetti and streamers, or just standing backstage while J Mascis shreds, Weezer seem hell-bent on making sure you get your money’s worth out of this tour.
Weezer setlist
“Anonymous”
“Return to Ithaka”
“Dope Nose”
“Hash Pipe”
“Pork and Beans”
“Beverly Hills”
“Burndt Jamb”
“Island in the Sun”
“Any Friend of Diane’s”
“Perfect Situation”
“Getchoo”
“Why Bother?”
“Pink Triangle”
“You Gave Your Love to Me Softly”
“Across the Sea”
“My Name Is Jonas”
“No One Else”
“The World Has Turned and Left Me Here”
“Buddy Holly”
“Undone (The Sweater Song)”
“Surf Wax America”
“Say It Ain’t So”
“In the Garage”
“Holiday”
“Only in Dreams”