Rivers Cuomo

Rivers Cuomo, the oft-frustrating front-man of alt-rock giants Weezer, follows up his well-received solo album with this second collection of demos and unrecorded material. Containing more of his alleged "800 unreleased home recordings," Alone II features Cuomo home alone, away from the pressures of keeping his band atop the charts. Playing like a true document, Rivers includes 16 pages of liner notes and photos featuring insight into the inspiration behind each track. Leftovers from The Blue Album ("Paperface" and "The Purification of Water") and the infamous unreleased Songs from the Black Hole LP ("Oh Jonas" and "Please Remember") are predictably the strongest of the bunch, reminding us how fancy-free and focused Rivers' music used to be. But despite the magnitude of songs included, Alone II (in combination with its predecessor) stands as some of the strongest Weezer-related material, period. Let's make a deal: three more volumes of Alone and we'll forget about Make Believe.