Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo is nothing if not well-organized. Less than a year after the release of demos collection Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo-- and some six months after his band of a decade and a half put out its sixth LP, the so-called Red Album-- Rivers will issue the spoils from yet another trek through the archives in the form of Alone II. The collection is now officially due from Universal Music Group's DGC Records on November 25.The second Alone set finds Rivers taking on the Beach Boys, re-imagining a randy refrain from the personal cache of Jermaine Dupri, and further cementing his position as one of pop's more thoughtful-- if occasionally inscrutable-- songwriters. Like the first Alone, the disc is coupled with expansive liner notes that offer up even more insight into Cuomo's time by his lonesome. It's an impressive package, made ever more so by the fact that Cuomo put it together during what can only be described as a busy year at his day job.We rang up Rivers late last week to talk about the tunes on the second Alone, the current collaboration-friendly atmosphere around Weezer, and that nearly unbelievable cover art. Pitchfork: What are you up to right now? I guess you're in between shows at the moment, huh?Rivers Cuomo: We just got to the venue in Houston, and we do have a show tonight.Pitchfork: Any official duties left before the show? Soundcheck?RC: Yeah, we have soundcheck. Apart from that, my main job is just to lie here on the couch.  Pitchfork: That sounds pretty lovely.RC: Actually, it is essential to the show for me, because my body and my unconscious mind just know to go into conservation mode all day before a show.Pitchfork: Sure.RC: So when I hit the stage, you know, my entire day's worth of energy comes out in those two hours.Pitchfork: Very reasonable.  RC: For years I fought that instinct to rest because I thought I was being lazy, so I tried to keep busy all day and take on different projects. Now I'm just like, "Ah, I see,  I am supposed to rest."  Pitchfork: What would you do instead?RC: Oh, I've done all kinds of things. From being a manager of Weezer to trying to write songs or trying to be a partier. I've tried it all.Pitchfork: Yeah, but this is the best? This is the optimal Rivers mode?RC: Couch potato.Pitchfork: Excellent. So you've got yet another collection of demos coming out next month. You did an interview with us around the time of Alone I's release, and you mentioned how there was an hour's worth of commercially viable stuff that you had just sort of waiting in the wings to be released like this. Is Alone II that?  RC: Yeah. That would be what we have here. I would have to say though, I was really surprised when I put Alone II together and listened down to it. I was really surprised how great it was. It makes me wonder if I have more good stuff on my hard drive than I thought I did. This one is not a step down in any sense.Pitchfork: No, it's not. I actually prefer it, I think, to the first one.RC: Yeah. I almost said that, but I love Alone I. It's just surprising, both times we tried to pick the best songs I had. For some reason, you would think number two wouldn't be as good, but it seems to be better, if anything.Pitchfork: Sure. How well cataloged is all this stuff?  How do you go about making the selections?RC: Well, iTunes has just been huge for me. I have it open right now... and so I have a playlist folder called "Alone". And then I open that up and I have something, like, 12 "Smart Playlists", which go through my whole library and pick out files according to various search criteria and rules. So I've opened up one here [right now]. It's called "1991-1992 The Yeast Master" and it's got about ten rules here. One is that the year is in the range 91-92. Another is that in the comment field it has the comment "DA"-- which was my original indication for "Demo Album". I started adding that notation about two years ago. And the comment says it's not been used, which means it was on the previous Alone album or it was put somewhere else. And the rating is not one, it's not two, it's not three, it's not four, which means it lets me do anything with a rating of five. Or no rating. So then I can look in that playlist and see all my best songs. And I have a bunch different "Smart Playlists" divided by year. It makes it pretty easy and fun to go through it all.Pitchfork: Sounds like a blast, really.RC: And since the first Alone record was put out, I found an old drive and some other old demos so they got thrown in the pool. That helped out.  Pitchfork: What's interesting to me with these compilations is that, even though they're obviously meant as a trip through the vaults, they're not presented chronologically. It seems to have been sequenced in a way for maximum listenability.  RC: Yeah, I'd love it if I could [put] them together chronologically and it would be the best listen, but that's not the case. I mean, my first priority is to make sure it's a great album if you're just listening to it and you don't even know who it is, or what their story is, or [in] what order the songs were written.Pitchfork: There's a statement in the liner notes, which are terrifically expansive, that I liked a lot for putting your work into some more perspective. You mentioned when you were listening to a lot of the Beach Boys and the Beatles, you say that you "found the kinds of melodies and chord progressions that [you] loved the most." It does seem that although the lyrical content of your songs has changed a great deal over the years, there are certain elements that have carried through until now, certain shapes and ideas. What is it that drew you to that music? And what keeps you coming back to that in your own writing?RC: That's a good question. It's interesting because as a musician, I cut my teeth on heavy metal music, which is, like, a lot of guitar riffs and fast scales, a lot of intense instrumental music, but not so much of the soaring romantic melodies in a major key. So when I started composing my own music in my late teens and early twenties, at first it was more like the metal music. I guess it was decent, but for some reason it just wasn't coming from the real me that I had yet to discover.I think hearing the Beach Boys' music really helped me key in on that. I think it's just a natural propensity I was born with. Or maybe it has to do with the musical quality of my voice. Like, what I'm actually best at singing. I'm not sure. But, yeah, I was born with a slightly different propensity than what I was actually drawn to listen to as a teenager and play on guitars as a teenager. And I didn't discover that until I was 21, 22.read more