DETROIT — Alterna-rockers Weezer performed a career-spanning set of fan favorites and band classics — with a special emphasis on "Pinkerton," the band's beloved 1996 album, one day shy of its 30th anniversary — at Little Caesars Arena on Wednesday, Sept. 23.

The crowd, some 13,000 strong, ran the gamut from Gen X to Gen Z. The setlist touched on nearly every era of the band.

Yet there was something disconnected about the band's performance, and not just the missing cymbals in "The Good Life" or the lack of guitar crunch during "Pork and Beans."

Weezer fans love debating about Weezer; there was a great "SNL" sketch about it in 2018. There are arguments about new Weezer vs. old Weezer, about the lack of soul in "Beverly Hills," about the band's lobotomized 2019 covers album, known as "The Teal Album." (Mercifully, the album was ignored on Wednesday.)

The garage rock geeks are perhaps the least likely band to spark such passionate debate among fans, yet Weezer's staying power — 20 albums in 32 years, and a massive presence everywhere from alternative rock radio to TikTok — proves the band is doing something right.

There was a lightheartedness to the band's performance Wednesday that made it difficult to get too angsty about. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate a thing called Weezer!" frontman Rivers Cuomo said at the top of the show, appropriating Prince in a way even the late musician would get a chuckle out of.

The band's set was built to resemble a backyard house party, complete with white picket fence and green astroturf on the stage, and two power lines running above the stage. It was Weezer suburbia. There was even a Weezer mailbox where the band received a special delivery late in the show.

But the band's performances were weirdly robotic and lacked a sense of humanity at its center. Key elements of the band's sound — mostly those headbanging, blow-your-hair-back, heavy guitar power chords that are Weezer's signature — were missing, or were much too soft to fill out the band's sound. And Cuomo's scripted stage banter (example: "man, this party is lit!") seemed dorky in a way that even a band that sings freely about Dungeons & Dragons would cringe over.

But there is no cringe with Weezer, and maybe that's the point. They're post-cringe because they were pre-cringe, never cool in a way that makes them forever cool. Not tied to Gen X (even though the band members are all in that X sweet spot, aged 56-61) so Gen Z can take ownership of them, and probably Gen Alpha after that. Weezer is timeless, because Weezer is for everyone, so maybe it's best to just let Weezer be Weezer.

The band opened with "Shine Again," the lead single from August's "The Gold Album," and then rolled right into "Surf Wax America," jumping all the way back to their 1994 debut album. Plenty has changed during that period between albums — most people didn't even have an email address back in 1994, when the band was first making its mark on MTV — but Weezer still looks and sounds pretty much the same, even if the band has swapped out a few bass players over the years.

"This party's officially off the hook" — again, yikes at the stage banter — "lets keep fishin!" Cuomo said, segueing into "Keep Fishin'," from 2002's "Maladroit." Soon up were a pair of tracks from "Pinkerton," "The Good Life" and "No Other One," two of five songs performed from the album over the course of the 95-minute show.

"Pinkerton" was rough and scrappy and emotionally raw at its core, and when the band played Saint Andrew's Hall while touring on the album in 1996, Cuomo barely made eye contact with the crowd, staring downward at the stage pretty much the entire evening. He's more of a jester now, but that no-eye-contact Cuomo felt more true to himself than the current one. There's an emptiness to the modern Cuomo that feels manufactured, perhaps as a defense mechanism built up over time to keep fans at arm's length.

Those built up walls carried through to the delivery of the songs, which felt plastic; they're the songs you know and love, but there wasn't an emotional connection to or with the performances. Even "Across the Sea," another ripped-from-the-heart "Pinkerton" treasure, felt like the band was covering itself, that initial rawness replaced by routine.

An acoustic set brightened things up in the middle of the set, with guitarist Brian Bell busting out a clarinet during "Longtime Sunshine," and Cuomo fumbling with his harmonica during "In the Garage" enough to know he wasn't faking it.

Cuomo played drums during "Pork and Beans" while drummer Patrick Wilson filled in for Cuomo on guitar. But when Wilson couldn't get his guitar working, he jumped on drums, and he and Cuomo had a bit of a drum off. (Twice the drums didn't make up for the song's glaring lack of guitar, however.)

Nikki Monninger, bassist for openers Silversun Pickups, joined Cuomo on a trio of songs, and played the Bethany Cosentino role on the TikTok-famous duet "Go Away." She also took on "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams," a "Pinkerton" B-side, originally sang by that dog.'s Rachel Haden.

There were some Detroit flourishes sprinkled throughout the show: Eminem was worked into the lyrics of "Pork and Beans" where the original song references Timbaland; "Detroit, Michigan" was folded into the chorus of "Beverly Hills"; and the mention of "half-Japanese girls" in "El Scorcho" became "half-Detroit" girls, while the song's trip to a Green Day concert became a White Stripes concert.

The 26-song set wrapped with back-to-back "Blue Album" faves "Say It Ain't So" and "Buddy Holly," with an "Island in the Sun" closer that included inflatable flamingos and ducks getting tossed into the crowd.

And while it's easy to get worked up over Weezer, it's easier to just enjoy the inflatable ducks and flamingos, and the song about escaping to somewhere nice and checking out. We should all be so lucky. Hip hip.

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