Weezer Heads Back To Studio In November

Weezer doesn't plan to waste any time in getting to work on its next album. Drummer Pat Wilson tells Billboard.com that the quartet plans to start recording the follow-up to this year's "Weezer" (aka "The Red Album") in early November. 

"A week after we get off tour, we're gonna be in the studio with Jacknife (Lee) again," reports Wilson. 

Lee, who produced two songs on the latest Weezer album, is coming to California for the sessions, and Wilson says work on the project has already begun. "We send him stuff that we've got, ideas that we have, whether it's a whole song or a killer riff we can build around or something," Wilson explains. "It's all going to him right now." 

Wilson says that as on the "Red" album, all four members of Weezer will be writing, singing lead and switching instruments: "It just seemed like that was the healthy way to keep everything feeling fresh. After 15 years of doing it the other way, it just felt like it was time." And Wilson credits the opening up of Weezer's creative process with helping the band become more prolific. 

"Now that we've got more writers, we don't have to wait for (frontman) Rivers (Cuomo) to have a bunch of songs he's happy with," he notes. "We used to take forever to make a record, then tour on it forever and be burnt out and not do anything for two years. This is a lot better." 

As for the next album's title, Wilson admits, "if I had my way, we would just use colors from now on, then we wouldn't have to think about titles. We must've had a hundred titles for the ('Red') record, and none of them felt right so we just gave up and said, 'OK, let's just make a color.'" 

Weezer's next album will also be the last for its current contract with DGC Records, but Wilson says the group has "no idea" what it plans to do in the future. "We're just really focused on trying to make the best record we can," he says. "I'm sure at that point we'll have all kinds of different options and we'll figure out what's the best for us." 

Weezer kicks off a North American headlining tour on Sept. 23 in Lowell, Mass. It wraps Oct. 25 in Duluth, Ga.