NEWS: Weezer Recording Comeback LP

MUSIC: Weezer Recording Comeback LP

On the heels of the news that ex-Weezer bassist Matt Sharp is plotting his return, Sharp's former bandmate Rivers Cuomo has revealed his plans to release a new Weezer studio LP in the first half of 2008.

Cuomo left the following post on the band's official website:

Th album will be Weezer's first since 2005's lackluster Make Believe and the band's reported 2006 hiatus. To catch a glimpse of the Dudes' work-in-progress, you can check out a recently leaked Rivers demo, "Pig," here.

No word yet whether or not Cuomo's recently expressed love of Tim McGraw and Shakira will be any influence on the band's new material.

Recommended Viewing:
Vintage Weezer (with Sharp).The 1996 video for "The Good LIfe"

It's really awful when you have a favorite band and you have to preface your love with "...but only from 1994 to 1996," because everything afterward is one memory-tarnishing embarrassment on top of another. Oh, Weezer. Please just break up for real so that I can keep the flame of the good ol' days alive.

At least I still have Pinkerton. You can't ever take that away, no matter how hard you try, Rivers.

As it turned out, Matt Sharp was the source of Weezer's excellence. It left with him.

harvard kills.

Maladroit was an accomplished, intelligent, albeit somewhat cheeky album, and was pretty solid for the end of their glory days as a band. Lets all hope for the Weezer that we fell in love with a long time ago.

Somehow I keep thinking how big a part Matt must have had in Weezer... cause I don't think there is another band that sounded so much different after the departure of one of their musicians... it's so sad... can't Rivers at least try to make his band sound like Weezer???
Oh... and "Pig" just destroyed my hopes... I think I'll go with that Rentals EP instead!

Anything they record will be better than Make Believe... It'd be impossible to get worse...

Blue album will forever be in my top 10 of all time. FOR-EV-ER

Beverly Hills. Wow that was a sucky song. Hopefully this stuff is better.

Beverly Hills is the place Paris Hilton wants to be. Weezer should want to be somewhere cool like Silverlake. And yes, but nonetheless, I still love to kill deer!

Its funny how everyones favorite album is Pinkerton when it was voted the worst album of 1996. Its understandable peoples perceptions change overtime, but when in the mainstream light you deal with life moment by moment (or so it seems..). so go make a great album yourself, follow through with a truly great 2nd album then have it be rated the worst of the year...then see what kind of music you want to continue contributing to the public.


p.s. im drunk, and i will fight you for this till i sober up...so you have a good 6 hours...

I guess I'm just a Weezer fangirl cause I wasn't disappointed by their last album. It was different from their earlier stuff but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

For example, Perfect Situation is a great song which I played over and over again when I got the album. I'd embed the video but the insert button isn't working for me for some reason. I also love We are all on Drugs.

People say this constantly. I say, bullshit. Matt Sharp is a good songwriter in his own right... or was at one point at least... but anyone who pays any degree of attention whatsoever could easily discredit the theory that Matt Sharps contribution to Blue and Pinkerton was very substantial. As for Blue, I wouldn't be shocked if I found out that Rivers recorded every note of bass on the whole record. It's not like he played a lot of lines. Other than a few melodic parts, he pretty much picks the roots in standard 8th notes. And as for Pinkerton, despite the fact that he actually contributed very creative bass lines to that record, there is no way he contributed to the overall song structures. He couldn't have. When Matt Sharp tries for a huge key change, it's jarring and obvious (not that there's anything wrong with that, I love "the man with two brains") as it is when most people do. Rivers on the other hand has consistently proven his ability to make the craziest moves in songs and have them actually work. And considering how personal the lyrics are, especially on the latter record, of course it was Rivers who masterminded it.

No, saying Matt Sharp held the key to Weezer's greatness is a coping device that allows people to think "maybe they'll reunite and form an awesome super band!"... well, that ain't gonna happen. The reason Weezer sucks is because Rivers is a neurotic nut-job. Even if I do launch a defense of his personality (I've recently read a few pretty good recent interviews with him) it remains true that his priorities with song writing are vastly different than they were in the golden era. He may have found happiness and if so, good for him, but his music fucking blows now.

absolutely spot on. it's sad, but i find myself saying just that about so many bands, especially fom the early to mid-nineties

What makes me happy the most everytime I listen to Pinkerton are those big badass pounding drums, freed from any restraints put upon them on every other Weezer release. Those are happy drums, with huge cymbals beaming 20 inch smiles. Oh, those drums. This is a record that sounds fucking alive, unlike the later releases

I don't have any delusion that Sharp will ever work with them again. I think, as with a lot of bands, it was their dynamic that made them different. One person leaving changes the dynamic. Like making chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate... it's still a cookie, it's still edible, but it's clearly not the same.
But you're right about Rivers. He IS a fucking case.

or you know, it was dubbed one of the worst albums by rolling stone, not some poll of american youth. i was fifteen when pinkerton came out. it was instantly my favorite album.

anyway, as for pinkerton's poor reviews being responsible for weezer's subsequent awfulness, i'm sure rivers would be grateful for the excuse, but it's pretty pathetic. he admitted that the green album was something of a backlash--after pouring out his soul to have it ripped to shreds, he follows up with an album of pop songs with completely unintelligible, meaningless lyrics.

but it's been elevent years since pinkerton. there are way more plausible reasons why weezer continues to suck, and bad press from 1996 ain't one of them.

hi five

While I'm no huge fan of Make Believe, I'm pretty sure Rivers was being pretty overly-sarcastic about Beverly Hills on that song. Sort of a statement on greed.

Of course, you can tell because he wears black framed glasses while the groupies blow him. It makes all the difference.

ugh, retire.

I liked weezer once upon a time, but i have NEVER heard a weezer song that sounded "soulful". they did a mary kate & ashley movie themesong, for the love of god. their first big hit was about tearing up a fucking sweater.

what confuses me is why would you call it a comeback album? didn't they just put an album out a few years ago? wouldn't this just be Weezers next album. i think more than a 2 year break would be needed to justify a comeback. a band like Tool only puts an album out about every 5 years, and i've never seen any of their albums listed as a comeback before its release.

perhaps they should go away, before trying to comeback.

i'm willing to accept some disagreement on the metaphorical nature of the lyrics to undone (even though i contend the evidence strongly favors an interpretation that the song is about more than a literal sweater). also, as a side note, weezer did not "do" a theme song for an olsen twins movie. they licensed a song from the previously mentioned pop-fluff album, the green album, to the olsens to cover it for their film.

anyway, in my first post i was specifically referring to the lyrical content of pinkerton, in which rivers laments meaningless sex, the isolation that followed his extremely painful operation (see the good life), and various failed encounters with women. some of them are humorous (pink triangle), but others clearly put some serious emotional turmoil out on the table (butterfly, anyone?)

of course whether you find these lyrics at all touching is a matter of personal opinion, but there's no question that rivers opened himself up by writing about these deeply personal thoughts and feelings.