Rivers Cuomo Is Writing Prolifically, But Not For Weezer

Weezer's eccentric frontman, Rivers Cuomo, has been writing new songs at a furious pace. Unfortunately for the other members of the group, he doesn't plan to use them for Weezer.

"All this year I've been feeling pretty creative and excited, so I've been writing a lot," Cuomo recently told MTV News. "I don't know what will 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."

Cuomo has been focusing on everything but his band over the last month. He just graduated from Harvard after a decade of part-time attendance. He also just wed his Japanese girlfriend, eerily fulfilling the lyrics of 1996's prophetic song, "Across The Sea."

While Cuomo isn't at odds with any of his bandmates, he isn't really communicating with them either, which makes a new Weezer album seem unlikely. A possible break-up was foreshadowed in the liner notes of their 2005 album, Make Believe, where Cuomo inserted a quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The Tempest is Shakespeare's final play, and the quote is taken from the final soliloquy of Prospero, the play's tragic protagonist, whom many scholars see as an incarnation of Shakespeare himself. It comes at the end of the play, as Prospero is renouncing his past and saying farewell to the audience.

"Well, the band is all back in Los Angeles, and I sometimes speak with Patrick, and I occasionally email with Brian and Scott, but we've never mentioned getting together," Cuomo said from his in-laws' home in Japan. "And I'm not certain we'll ever make a record again, unless it becomes really obvious to me that we need to do one."

Though Cuomo is unsure of the destination for the songs he's been writing, he's forthcoming about the content of some of them. "Heart Songs" is about all of the artists and records that have influenced him, while "Our Time Will Come" was written about the underachieving U.S. soccer team.Cuomo hasn't just been writing while he's in Japan. He's been recording, too, he said.

"At 1 p.m., I get on my crazy Japanese bike and ride for 10 minutes down to the mega-mall, and on the third floor they have all these studios you can rent for five bucks an hour, with drums and a soundboard and everything. So I go in there and work, and when I'm done, I exit into the midst of a Japanese mega-mall."