Weezer are on a roll with their music career. Picture: Jordan Shields

2014’s Everything Will Be Alright In the End was a promising return, which leads us to album number 10 — The White Album.

Rest assured, the band have actually managed to turn things around — defying history by releasing two very good albums in a row — a feat not done since 1996 and 2001 with Pinkerton and The Green Album.

But no matter what this now-iconic geek-rock band does — critics always nonchalantly describe the band’s releases as “a return to the Weezer of old”.

Frontman Rivers Cuomo says he finds this perplexing.

“I’m always baffled by what the critics say,” he says.

“I don’t really spend any time trying to understand our narrative history and understand our trajectory and our development. I’m just living in the moment trying to make great music. It always sounds fresh to me but if people want to understand it as a throwback album then — there’s nothing I can say about that.”

Front man Rivers Cuomo (third from left) used Tinder as one of many inspirations for writing Weezer’s The White Album.Source:Supplied

Cuomo pushed himself for the writing of The White Album and it shows. It’s a solid release marred only by its stupendous first single Thank God For Girls. Among the writing techniques was an unlikely source — Tinder.

“I’m always interested in new writing techniques,” he says when asked about its use.

“Stream of consciousness, instinctualism and spontaneity and locking in myself in a room for privacy is always going to be part of what I do. I’m really interested in cutting and pasting and cutting up texts from different sources including my own journals, and overheard conversations to create stories.”

“I’m just trying to introduce as many different ingredients as I can.”

Cuomo says he took these steps to create something vastly different from previous release Everything Will be Alright in the End, which he likens to the band’s 1996 cult classic Pinkerton.

“It’s a strange record,” he says of EWBAITE.

Weezer’s latest record ‘The White Album’ is out now.Source:Supplied

“We love it so much and it’s fun to perform. That album, there’s something about it that feels like it’s more for a select core group of the Weezer world — just like Pinkerton when it came out, it had a small audience but a passionate audience.”

But in discussing albums nine and ten, the softly spoken Cuomo admits Weezer almost came undone before we heard album number one.

“There was one time where I almost gave up and left the band,” he explains.

“It was the end of 1992 I think. We’d been playing together for probably about eight months and we still didn’t have a record deal and I remember I came home from school and the guys were already in the garage rehearsing and I laid down on my bed and I just did not want to go in to rehearse I felt so depressed and like ‘I don’t want to go on’ and ‘this isn’t going to go anywhere’ - ‘even if we did become successful is this something I want to do for the rest of my life? Somehow I summoned up the courage to go into the garage and start rehearsing. I remember saying ‘Rivers whatever you’re thinking — it’s going to pass’. It was a few months after that — we got a record deal.”

Weezer performing in Perth in 2013. Cuomo says they will be back in January next year. Picture: Jordan ShieldsSource:News Limited

Along with album No. 10, fans can expect to hear Cuomo on a number of different releases and collaborations two of which couldn’t be more removed from each other — Vic Mensa and The Monkees.

“It’s a real testament to the unique position Weezer is in that we can have a conversation about being on a Vic Mensa record and a Monkees record in the same breath and there’s nothing unusual about it,” he laughs.

“Vic Mensa is actually a real fan of rock music — he picked the last piece of Weezer music that I thought would lay the foundation of a hip hop track. It’s the instrumental breakdown of a song from Pinkerton — it’s the furthest from hip hop you can possibly get. But it sounds incredible.

“With The Monkees — I don’t know — I think they contacted my manager about contributing a song and I said ‘yeah of course’,” he says.

“They’ve been a huge inspiration for me so I sent through some ideas — I think it came out great. It was the first time someone told me to change a lyric so it sounds older. Usually I get told the opposite but I had to make it sound more appropriate for 70 year-olds,” he laughs.

With time running short, I fire a handful of rapid fire questions at the singer’s direction with equally paced returns.

No there won’t ever be an official live Weezer record, the band learned a lot from the Memories tour and are still considering giving 2008’s The Red Album the same treatment.

But there are seven words he mentions in regards to Australia that we’ve been waiting more than three years for.

“Yes ... you will see us in January,” he says defiantly.

HEAR: The White Album (Warner) is out now

SEE: Weezer will tour Australia in early 2017