by SHANE SINNOTT

In a few weeks, Weezer will be releasing their sixth album, the third that’s self-titled (people are calling it “the red album”). What’s exciting, for starters, is that unlike their past few albums, it sounds like it doesn’t suck. While those of us holding a vigil for a return to Pinkerton’s greatness may be waiting forever, this new one ain’t half bad at all. If you go to tinyurl.com/5tremn, you can download a track called “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn),” which is a delicious return to the quirky, thick-sounding pop of the glory years, a clever epic in the vein of the single “El Schorco.” A tale of frontman Rivers Cuomo’s rise, fall, and then sort-of-rise-again to fame, it’s filled with lyrics like, “Somebody said all the world’s a stage, and each of us is a player... /In Act 1, I was struggling to survive... /In Act 2, I hit the big time/and bodies be all up on my behind/I can’t help myself, because I was born to shine/If you don’t like it, you can shove it/But you don’t like it, you love it.” Fun stuff. Look for more to have leaked by the time you read this.

Since it just overtook Yahoo as the number one music-streaming site on the Web, now might be a good time to mention Imeem (www.imeem.com), a social networking site devoted to the exchange of music and videos. The company has ponied up big-time for contracts with the four majors, as well as a bunch of indies, so there’s none of this “play the first 30 seconds of a song and then give you a link to buy it” type of horseshit. Basically, you can make a profile and put crap you like on it, like Facebook, only all the media and videos you like are available for other people to listen to, and instead of getting a stupid news feed about how some guy you went to high school with enjoyed his sandwich, it’ll tell you instead that he’s currently listening to MGMT, like everybody else (tinyurl.com/43wt5f).