Well, sort of. When the band’s sixth album (still untitled at press time) debuts in late April, the bespectacled songwriter behind pop-perfect hits like “Buddy Holly,” “Say It Ain’t So” and “Island in the Sun” divides songwriting and vocal duties—for the first time—among himself and long-time band members Pat Wilson, Brian Bell and Scott Shriner.

Whether he felt it was time to shake up the band’s formula after 16 years (Yes, 16 years. Feel old yet, Gen X’ers?) or a reaction to criticisms of their last album (2005’s panned but platinum Make Believe), Cuomo is changing his tune. “More than any album we’ve made, this one really represents the tastes of all four of us—it’s the album we would stand behind the most,” says Cuomo. With returning producer Rick Rubin helming what fans have simply referred to as “Album Six,” and other projects such as a recent collection of largely acoustic demo recordings (Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo) and a book in the works (“It’s become a big project—roughly 400 pages right now,” says Cuomo), the arena-rock star with the mousy demeanor is embracing the maelstrom of activity.

“We feel like we’ve been held back for years by worrying about what fans or radio is going to think,” he adds, “so we said, ‘Let’s just focus on what we want to hear.’”

We spoke to Cuomo about his band’s new direction, his penchant for rapping and why he can’t play Weezer’s songs in video-game form.

What will surprise Weezer fans about the new record?
There’s a lot of adventurousness and experimentation on this album. We have different guys in the band writing songs and different guys singing lead vocals. There’s instrument switching—I play drums on some songs.
I’m not sure what’s going to make the album, but there’s a song called “Ms. Sweeney” that has rap verses. And “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” has rapping in it, too.

We also have very long songs that take lots of twists and turns. There’s a wide variety of genres from rap to swing to a kind of goth sound to a more traditional Weezer pop sound.

For more, get the latest Issue of Performing Songwriter, ISSUE No. 108