Pitchfork

After an uncharacteristically productive period in 2001 and 2002, during which they released their first albums in five years, Weezer have been taking things relatively slow, perhaps taking extra care to ensure that their long-gestating (and still forthcoming) fifth full-length exceeds the expectations of their notoriously hardass fanbase. Since December of 2003, Weezer had been in and out of the studio with producer Rick Rubin working on new material, to varying degrees of success. However, the band has now scrapped the results of those sessions, in favor of new material they began work on three weeks ago. According to a post on Weezer.com, the group has been in the studio for much of August laying down songs from scratch.

The website explained the band's decision to shelve their work with Rubin, stating that it was a "response to [frontman] Rivers [Cuomo] regaining his sense of momentum with his songwriting, and not feeling right about continuing with the incomplete recordings from December." It goes on to reveal: "In effect, the band is now producing itself, as it did on [the prior albums] Pinkerton and Maladroit, but this time they have a wise shoulder to lean on if and when need be. So far, it's working out pretty excellently."

Indeed, those of you concerned about the status of Rubin's feelings should be pleased to know that Weezer are still exceptionally tight with the ZZ Top lookalike, and even credit him for helping frontman Rivers Cuomo through some apparently Pinkerton-caliber personal issues. As another post on the band's site reports, "[Rick] has become more of a 'mentor' figure. He had a tremendous impact on Rivers and the band in '03, helping re-organize the band's then-somewhat confused recording priorities, and being a wonderful and positive influence on Rivers, helping him 'find his way' both personally and in songwriting again." That's awesome. Maybe someone with some clout out there can offer this guy a talk show? Come on, he'd totally maul Dr. Phil.

Nothing resembling an accurate tracklist has surfaced yet, but the band has been working steadily on a collection of 12 songs during their summer sessions, including both new compositions and some older tunes from Cuomo's stack of Ace Frehley-stickered notebooks. As yet another in a long list of website updates tells us, the tracks "have been worked up since early this year as demos, over the entire spring time, by Rivers. In some cases, they were developed from songs being worked on in '03, but underwent such changes as to now be totally distinct from their origins. Basically, these 12 songs are 'new,' but 'new' means early and spring 2004 (not last week or whatever). Also, there is the possibility of trying some additional songs if there is time, and such material could be '04 or '03 stuff."

No release date is being offered, but as Cuomo has revealed in his blog on MySpace.com (where he's also been posting solo acoustic demos as of late), he's heading back to Harvard in mid-September, so the band is hoping to wrap up major recording duties in the next few weeks. A purely speculative release would have it finished by late fall and in stores by early-to-mid 2005.