check out that 'stache

You know when you grow up with someone, and you're best friends with them for your entire life, but maybe you also realize that over the past three years or so you've begun to grow apart, but still see each other, so you kind of remain best friends almost as much out of comfort as you do for any other reason? 

That's Weezer. 

Favorite band? In all honesty, probably not since the Green album came out and supremely disappointed. 

Maybe we were expecting too much. Maybe it was time to consider that the Blue album and Pinkerton were as much products of a band in a particular time and place, and to ask someone to emulate a phase of their life would be asking for too much, and end up being too fake anyways. It was always Weezer's honesty that fans found endearing, and catching lightening in a bottle three times in a row was just not going to happen.

With that admission long ago conceded, I download the leaked eight tracks of the upcoming album, and I must say that although they don't blow me away, I personally feel it's the best they've done since Pinkerton. It feels like they know it too, and they decided to forgo a name almost to underscore the fact that...in spirit, this is essentially the third Weezer album everyone has been waiting for. 

The catch however, is that if you aren't already a Weezer fan, you probably won't find any of these songs particularly special. And even if you used to be, it's entirely possible you've just outgrown the sound by now. Realistically, if you weren't still waiting for this, you probably won't care. This album was, quite apparently, made with fans in mind, and it seems like the band now has the hindsight to enjoy and appreciate the Weezer experience that we had all along.

If you are indeed a huge lover of all things Weez, you're going to be hard pressed to not hit repeat on Heart Songs about a gajillion times. 

Along with most of this album, it almost seems like the band is parodying itself. But Heart Songs lets you into where Rivers is right now, and stirs up feelings about the band's idiosyncratic nerd-rock that you thought died when they recorded "Crab".

Heart Songs is an homage to Weezer by Weezer, and although it's not necessarily going to bring the band back into the type of relationship they had with fans in years past, it's certainly a spectacular reminder of why Weezer once occupied that place in the first place.