Honestly, I was going to buy the new Weezer album anyway. The band had me ever since that “Buddy Holly” video directed by Spike Jonze. (You know the one.) Now, it turns out that the nerd rockers have another obsession beyond ‘Happy Days’ and YouTube videos. They also love ‘Lost,’ and have titled their upcoming album “Hurley.” The cover art is a big photo of Jorge Garcia’s smiling face. This is a band after my own heart.

In an interview with Spinner, frontman Rivers Cuomo says, “I just loved this photo of Jorge Garcia – it just had this amazing vibe. We didn’t want to do a fourth self-titled record and we knew people would refer to it as ‘the Hurley record’ even if we left it without that title, so we just called it ‘Hurley.’ No words are on the cover because all we wanted was his amazing face.”

And here it is:

Sorry, Losties, there won’t be any actual songs about ‘Lost’ on the album. In fact, Cuomo also admits that he hasn’t finished watching the series yet. The album title and cover spawned primarily from his friendship with Garcia.

So, yeah, that’s odd, and also extremely nerdy. But odd and nerdy are Weezer’s stock in trade. This seems right up their alley.

The album “drops” (in the parlance of today’s kids) on September 14th. In the meantime, the band is also running a photo editing contest. See the Spinner article for details.

[via AV Club. Thanks to Ben for the tip.]