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It would take a lot for me to ever hate on Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, an indication how how excellent both The Blue Album and Pinkerton are.  But as I was debating with a friend over the weekend, it feels like Rivers Cuomo has never grown up emotionally or been too emotionally invested in song writing since Pinkerton. 

Pitchfork confirms this with their lambasting of Weezer’s new LP Raditude.  The album ”doesn’t have that stench of minimal calculation on it; if anything, it’s as earnest as the famously confessional Pinkerton, just written by someone whose age doesn’t match his POV. But the record’s teen-boy empowerment message doesn’t have much to offer anyone over 13 years old. Perhaps the proper fictional character to reference isn’t Peter Pan, but Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson from Dazed and Confused– we all get older, Rivers Cuomo stays the same age.”  Ouch!

Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo brought along an a capella group for this rendition. This song just slays me every time I hear it. If it’s possible The Beach Boys may be the only group in music history that is both underrated and overrated at the same time. Pet Sounds along with a few other albums are so remarkably good that it’s easy to look past a lot of the shit they released.

In many ways this is also like Weezer. I’m convinced that Pinkerton is the Pet Sounds for my generation. There I said it. This was performed as part of Stereogum’s Decomposted series, which brings musicians into a studio to play stripped down versions of their songs. (I still think I prefer My Old Kentucky Blog’s Laundro Matinee, but whatevs)

Next to “Blast Off” this is the finest song from Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo’s solo album. “Lover in the Snow” is a sweet little ditty, with a nice guitar riff, song tamborines and handclaps. Throw in Rivers lyrics about wondering why some girl loves another man and yeah it woulda made a fine Weezer tune.

Still, the video is funny. We get an opening monologue about Rivers’s absentee dad, their passion for soccer and they Rivers going into Rocky mode, before playing soccer with Mia Hamm.

Either way. It’s a great song and a great video. Together they’ve got an oddball charm to them.

Is it time to call Chris Hanson from NBC’s To Catch a Predator and set up an intervention with Weez frontman Rivers Cuomo? It might be too early to tell, but judging from this strange video for the single “Blast Off!” from his uneven solo album Alone: Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo 1992-1997(the highs and high and the lows are pretty low), Cuomo’s choice of facial hair, mixed with his choice of a YMCA-like gym to get himself pumped leaves us feeling a little icky.

Oh well, the song rocks balls and only makes us wish Weezer had released the shelved album Songs From the Black Hole, from whence this song was originally recorded for.

Rivers Cuomo, frontman for Weezer, has been busy lately prepping both a new Weezer album and a batch of solo material.  The solo stuff was all recorded between 1992-1997.  Head over to his myspace page where you can hear the first song, “Blast Off.”  The song sounds like classic Weezer, unlike say their last three releases.

Maybe there won’t be hope for the next Weezer album, but maybe Rivers’s solo adventure will supply the fix we’ve all be looking for.

Via: Stereogum

Throw those Weezer signs into the air. The band you love to “hope will put out a good album but invariably will fall short of your expectations because Pinkerton was so damn good” have announced the release date for their sixth studio album.Pitchfork is reporting that “album six” will be released on April 22, 2008 and will be leaked probably a few weeks before that.

“Weezer fans truly have something to look forward to,” gushed Weezer bassist Scott Shriner about the new Weezer album on the Weezer website. “The entire band has accomplished some of its most challenging goals as a group and as individuals. It’s all coming together on this album.”

You’ll forgive us for not holding our breath. Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, which supposedly has an Ice Cube cover– lands December 18 via Geffen. But you already knew that.

Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has ended his educational sabbatical.  We know that since the summer Weezer has been hard at work on their sixth LP and when not doing the the musician thing, Cuomo was fast at work penning his first autobiography.

That book was supposed to be released this winter, but according to Filter Magazine, the tome is approaching Tolstoyian proportions at 400 pages.   The book has been shelved by the publishing house until completion, but Geffen Records plans to release an album full of Cuomo solo material this December.

Alone – The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo will slide nicely into an Weezer fans’s collection on Dec. 11, put probably as a nice little stocky stuffer.  The even better news is that all the  recordings took place from 1992-1997, which coincides with the time period known as the “creatively awesome era” in the Weezer canon.  In case you were wondering the “creatively awesome era” saw the release of The Blue Album and Pinkerton, respectively.

Everything after that has just been bullocks.   You can check him out on Myspace where he made the casual announcement.