What ever happened to Weezer?

Man, I remember when Weezer first started getting airplay on MTV, and that sweater song was being sung by young folks everywhere I went. It was a great, anthemic song with simple lyrics from a band that mostly ripped off 50’s chord progressions. But this came in the midst of the flannel revolution, and they couldn’t have sounded more different than the Pearl Jams, Nirvanas and Stone Temple Pilots. It was a breath of fresh air to have four nerdy guys who just liked to rock out and had a great sense of melody. That first album didn’t have a bad or mediocre song on it. Then came Pinkerton, which I listened to incessantly for about a year. The songs were great, they were exposing really personal information thereby helping to really connect the singer to the songs, the maker to the making. But from then on, each album has lost more and more of it’s luster. So now they have a new disc slated to be released this year, and I don’t even know if I care anymore. I used to LOVE this band, but their most recent releases have left me dissapointed. The first few albums had soul, but these recent records are just lacking in the “this was not made by robots” department. Maybe it’s just me, but I look back to a time when a Weezer solo wasn’t just the melody of the song played on guitar.