Kind of Blue: Weezer Celebrates Debut Album's 30th Anniversary at American Airlines Center

“Dallas, what’s up? How are you space cadets doing tonight?” Rivers Cuomo inquired, not long after Weezer took the American Airlines Center stage Sunday night. “We’re 30 light-years out from the Blue Planet, and very excited to get there. Thank you for going on this very important mission with us.”

That invocation of time and distance felt like a gentle, mildly disarming way to underscore the reason all of us were crammed into the arena in the first place, a space teeming with fans of all ages — those who were children themselves when Weezer burst onto the scene way back in 1994 now shared the moment with children of their own — all of whom were eager to be catapulted back in time to bask in the enduring brilliance of Weezer’s now-30-year-old self-titled debut (now colloquially known as the Blue Album).

The Dallas stop on the “Voyage to the Blue Planet” tour was a multi-hour excursion into the past, conducted in the here and now.
Every band on the bill — Weezer, the Flaming Lips and Dinosaur Jr. — had passed through North Texas within the previous 12 months (Dinosaur Jr. was last here in April 2023, Weezer in June 2023 and the Lips in November 2023), yet that fact did nothing to dim the enthusiasm of the capacity crowd.

Weezer was on hand to indulge in a conceit that’s grabbed hold of bands of a certain vintage: playing a landmark album in full. The airtight, 90-minute set was frontloaded with odds and ends — “Dope Nose” here, “Hash Pipe” there and a “Beverly Hills” just 'cause — including a five-song detour into (checks notes) the “Pinkerton asteroid field.” After some interstitial business involving a costume change, more fog pumped into the arena and the umpteenth bit of mildly clever video business — Weezer’s staging Sunday often felt like Disney World run amok, full of smoke and pre-recorded video bits and and lights and props — it was into the Blue Album we all plunged (“The planet’s dying,” Cuomo cried as he planted a Weezer flag into a fake rock. “We need the Blue Album to bring it back to life!”).

Ten songs over (roughly) 40 minutes: Weezer has aged beautifully. Whatever mainline music trends have come and gone in the intervening three decades, these tracks landed with the force of a meteorite Sunday. “My Name is Jonas,” “No One Else,” “Surf Wax America,” and, yes, “Buddy Holly” are power-pop gems as effervescent and precocious now as they were upon release.

Cuomo and his bandmates — guitarist-keyboardist Brian Bell, drummer Patrick Wilson and bassist Scott Shriner — were in well-practiced lockstep throughout, and Cuomo’s tenor has, remarkably, seemingly maintained all its youthful snap and vigor.

The crowd ate every bit of it up: Blue streamers filled the air as “Jonas” began, and hands making the “Weezer sign” dotted the field of vision all the way to the upper deck. The ferocity with which the room sang the chorus of “Say It Ain’t So” was enough to put you back on your heels a little — it felt like some kind of long-delayed catharsis. Or maybe they were just fuming about the $70 sweatshirts at the merch table.

The Flaming Lips preceded Weezer with a frenetic, 50-minute set which often felt like having a nervous breakdown on mushrooms. (That’s a compliment.)
Wayne Coyne, along with long-time member Steven Drozd, multi-instrumentalists Derek Brown and Matt Duckworth Kirksey and bassist Tommy McKenzie, is no stranger to lysergic lunacy. Therefore, the opportunity to have such an extravagantly large canvas for his band’s brand of psych-pop maximalism thrilled him. “I have to tell you, it’s amazing to play in such a giant place,” he observed Sunday.

Coyne reeled off the band’s Dallas history — a fervent shout-out to the Theatre Gallery (“The only place that would let us play,” he said), as well as a great many other Dallas venues ensued (the Longhorn Ballroom, the Arcadia Theatre, the Bomb Factory, Trees and so on) — and served as genial ringleader for the controlled chaos that is a Lips show.

Enormous inflatable robots (for “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1,” natch) jostled for attention with Coyne galloping across the stage hoisting a “Fuck Yeah Dallas” balloon over his head butted up against the sight of Coyne, clad in a Wonder Woman Snuggie, crooning the band’s 1995 breakout hit “She Don’t Use Jelly,” collided with the sight of an arena full of lighted phones, glittering as “Love Yer Brain” echoed off the rafters, as a panoply of lasers and retina-searing spotlights pulsed behind it all.

Do You Realize?

For all the sensory overload, the setlist was remarkable for its deft evocation of the Lips’ evolution, from the peaks of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots through to 2006’s punchy, politically charged At War with the Mystics, exemplified by that album's galloping, galvanizing “Pompeii am Götterdämmerung,” one of the most exquisite songs the band’s ever produced.

The Lips haven’t softened, exactly, as time has marched on, but the once provocative has become palatable. (A late cover of Madonna’s “Borderline” was the sonic equivalent of getting chocolate in your peanut butter.) If nothing else, Coyne’s acknowledgment of the audience’s affection — “Every time you say it, we hear it and we feel it, and it makes you feel superhuman,” he said Sunday — was a lovely reminder that weirdos need affection too.

Dinosaur Jr. kicked off the evening with a 20-minute set so viciously loud and impenetrable it felt as if J Mascis, Murph and Lou Barlow were actively trying to cave in the American Airlines Center’s ceiling.

The clarifying blast of alt-rock — Mascis stood stoically in front of his wall of amps, as Murph anchored the drum kit and Barlow bounced around, his bass guitar swinging — was a ceaseless smear of distortion and low-end rattle, reeling from “Feel the Pain” to “Freak Scene” to an odd (although handsomely mounted) rendition of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.”

Capping things with a near-apocalyptic “Gargoyle,” Dinosaur Jr. seemed to make explicit that well-worn line from Dylan Thomas: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Play it loud enough, weird enough and long enough, and just maybe, beat back the encroaching darkness for another day.