New Weezer LP Due in '05; Cuomo Posts Solo Tracks
"The Color Purple" to feature Oscar-caliber performances

The day is drawing closer that anxious Weezer fans will finally bear witness to new material from the band. It's been more than two years since the group's last full-length, Maladroit, hit shelves in May 2002, and though the wait so far has been nothing compared to the five-year hiatus between Pinkerton and The Green Album, the group's ardent followers are, we hear, growing increasingly impatient.

So it should come as a relief that frontman Rivers Cuomo has told Billboard that they expect the record, produced by Rick Rubin and to be released on Rubin's American Recordings label, to be completed by the end of August, with a tentative release date of first-quarter 2005. The record could potentially hit sooner, but Cuomo has decided to delay the release until the end of his semester at Harvard this fall.

In the meantime, Rivers has utilized MySpace.com, a Friendster-like community website that allows members to upload pictures, music, and whatever (but at speeds much faster than the frustratingly slow Friendster), to circulate three solo acoustic songs. The tracks, which are free to stream but don't appear to be downloadable, appear alongside the sort of personal bio information you'd expect to see at a site like this, including the fact that Cuomo is a straight Gemini, "not a movie guy," and that his favorite TV shows as a child were Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting and The Guiding Light. The three tracks are all covers: "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie, John Denver's "Annie's Song", and Ann Poonkasem's "Invincible". Somewhere, Ann Coulter seethes with envy. Again.

Weezer: http://www.weezer.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com