Last time we heard from Weezer, frontman Rivers Cuomo said they were “done.” Cooked. Put on ice … again.All of a sudden, though, it seems like things have ramped back up for the band that is more on-again/off-again than a Brittany Murphy engagement. Months after a mysterious Web site with the vague name AlbumSix.com began redirecting traffic to Weezer’s homepage, a note was posted on both sites on Monday announcing that the group was not only back together, but about to wrap up work on a yet-untitled sixth album.
A post titled “Yams, clams, flans, plans, shams, crans and glands” and attributed to Cuomo announced, “Hey Party-People, Weezer is just polishing up a batch of songs for a recording session that is going to start at the beginning of July. This will be the final recording session for our sixth album which we aim to put out in the first half of 2008. We hope you are all having good times. Love, R-Dawg.” The post was accompanied by a photo of an unidentified kid in blue jeans, a white button-down and an oversized black leather coat, which could very well have been a pint-size Cuomo, but we’re not sure, since no one in the band’s camp is really talking.
A source close to Weezer confirmed, however, that they are scheduled to wrap the album soon and that it is tentatively slated for a 2008 release.
Last July, Cuomo was camped out at his in-laws’ house in southern Japan writing songs at a furious pace, with no idea where they’d go. “All this year, I’ve been feeling pretty creative and excited, so I’ve been writing a lot,” Cuomo said at the time . “I don’t know what’ll happen with these songs – if anything – I just sort of write them and I can’t stop. I certainly don’t see them becoming Weezer songs, and I don’t really see the point of a solo career. So we’ll just have to see.”
But cryptic messages in the liner notes to Weezer’s 2005 album, Make Believe, appeared to lend credence to the feeling that the band was going to call it quits well short of its 15th anniversary.
In particular, a quote from William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” read, “This rough magic/ I here abjure, and, when I have required/ Some heavenly music, which even now I do/ To work mine end upon their senses that/ This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff/ Bury it certain fathoms in the earth/ And deeper than did ever plummet sound/ I’ll drown my book” .
A demo of a song called “Pig” has been floating around online since April, but it’s unclear if that tune – which features Cuomo accompanied by an acoustic guitar, piano and harmonica singing about playing in the mud, talking to the animals and being in love with a girl named Tina – will end up on the new album.
