Power pop masters Weezer have always done things their own way, at their own pace and often at the whims of lead singer Rivers Cuomo.

So when the group, which brings its Troublemaker Tour to Toronto's Air Canada Centre tonight, began work on its third self-titled album (primarily known as The Red Album), it was more than just Cuomo bringing songs to the table.

In fact, each of the four contributed and, at times, switched roles in the band, something drummer Pat Wilson says was a natural thing to do.

"It just felt like time to change things up," Wilson said prior to a show in New Jersey. "We've been doing things pretty much the same way for 15 years, so it just sounded exciting to mess around with that."

Wilson, Cuomo, bassist Scott Shriner and guitarist Brian Bell ended up with several songs for the new record, one described as a departure from the guitar-driven, terribly catchy rock numbers such as Buddy Holly, Undone (The Sweater Song), Hash Pipe and the latest nugget Pork and Beans.

"We asked ourselves a lot of important questions before we started," Wilson says. "What makes us excited? What sounds like a lot of fun? And we fulfilled a lot of those goals, so it was really rewarding.

"We took each song as its own entity. We just sort of said, 'How should we illustrate the world that this song exists in?' We literally tried everything that we wanted to try just to see. There's a lot of experimentation, and it was cool to go through that because we learned a lot."

Although often behind his drum kit, Wilson branched out on this record to sing lead vocals and play guitar on Automatic, one of the tracks the group self-produced.

"I had this giant beat and I really liked it," he says. "It had a sort of Zeppelin-y feel, and from there I added some guitar and vocals on it. I just kept honing it, honing the arrangements."

Weezer worked with producers Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee on the record. Wilson says each brought their own approach to the recording process -- Rubin being more "hands off" while Lee was a bit more "hands on."

The group has a rather novel concept as part of its world tour, namely a "hootenanny." Weezer created it to keep a rather ordinary promotional tour from being what Wilson terms "lame."

"We came up with the idea of trying to get a bunch of our fans together in a room with their instruments and see if we could get through a couple of songs," Wilson says. "And it turned out really good, so we thought let's try it. We can't really have a hootenanny with thousands of people, but they can get a sense of what that sounds like and what that feels like."

Weezer places a video on YouTube of a song they'll be playing in each city a few days before performing there, showing the chord structures and melodies. The record company goes through the videos from fans, and those selected show up on concert day for a quick run-through before the gig.

The band even pulled it off in Japan recently, despite the obvious language barrier.

"(Such fans) basically just come on, nobody really knows what's going to happen at all, but it's been working pretty well," he says.

Weezer plans to get back into the studio soon, but Wilson says this tour is now the main focus. The tour has them covering Oasis' What's the Story Morning Glory, ironically the same song the British band was performing when guitarist Noel Gallagher was attacked on stage earlier this month at the Virgin Festival in Toronto.

So is there some sort of connection between the choice of cover and the incident?

"It just sounded like a fun song to do," Wilson says before rethinking his stance. "Well, okay, from now on it's to show our solidarity with our brothers across the pond."