I knew I was late to the Matt Sharp party. Apparently, I was so late everybody was going to bed.

In 2002, the former Weezer bassist and Rentals lead singer was performing a solo show down the road from my place in Austin, Texas. I tied on my pink Chucks, pulled on my drawstring pants, and loaded the iPod with all things Rentals—Moog-charged pop classics like "Friends of P," "The Man with Two Brains," and the other cult hit songs I'd discovered only a year earlier. Charged and excited, I slapped the door open when I arrived.

The club stared me down. The crowd was silent, sitting cross-legged on the normally cigarette-lined floor. Sharp was sans mike for his solo acoustic set, surrounded by candles. These people were Friends of Percodan.

I had missed the part of the story where the Rentals disbanded, Sharp escaped to Tennessee for a breather, and emerged as a solo songwriter. His former Weezer cronies had since gone arena with their sound; Sharp couldn't exactly be blamed for the reverse direction—as he puts it, "as warm and fuzzy and fireside chat-ish as possible."

Five years later, I'm still cautious. Sharp laughs from his house in L.A. when I ask if people need pillows at his latest concerts. "I think a pogo stick would be better," he says.

The return of the Rentals isn't just an album title this time (unlike their debut in 1995). The re-formed band celebrated their first full year of touring last month, and Sharp is shocked that people are still coming to the gigs and "acting like a bunch of football hooligans." But they have good reason to jump and dance again. Even though only Rachel Haden returns from the band's early days, this lineup is faithful in concert, pumping clubs full of synthesizers, multipart vocal harmonies, and horn-rimmed glasses.

This return started not with Haden, however, but with Sara Radle, a relatively unknown punk-rock singer out of Dallas. Like Sharp, Radle had recently changed songwriting gears, reborn as a piano-pop solo artist, and they met while Sharp was touring with Goldenboy in 2005. Sharp called their songwriting compatibility "effortless." At the time, he was mentally juggling a few options: a new solo album, or perhaps a return to Weezer, thanks to his rekindled friendship with Rivers Cuomo. But after further meetings with Radle in both Texas and L.A., he listened back to recent songwriting demos and noticed something: "That sounds like the beginnings of... like I'm making another Rentals record."

A month later, Radle was on her way to L.A., and the duo held auditions (and called old friend Haden) to create a sextet with more in mind than female singers, Moog maestros, and violin addicts. "I didn't want to get into it unless we were thinking about the group as people who were invested in what we were doing," Sharp says. Hesitant to revive the revolving-door lineups of the old Rentals, he tried to find a gang that would stick. So far, so good—but Sharp admits that potential comings and goings are "still the daunting part."

The easy part must be whipping up new material, as the forthcoming Last Little Life EP makes the group's eight-year recording silence seem more like months. Though the four-song disc lacks amplified shouters like "Big Daddy C," the Rentals' trademark melancholy pop is still in full force, like when Sharp quips "I've got a date with procrastination/I don't wanna be late" over horns and female backup singers during "Life Without a Brain."

Sharp is eager to get back into the studio, where the group will return after their current tour to begin the Rentals' third album. To his credit, he hasn't lost sight of how albums have changed in eight years. "With everything being digitized, there's less importance stressed on the presentation of albums, certainly," he says. "It ends up going into the way you approach it live."

Sharp's concert lust stems from more than fearing the downloading kids. "The fact that anybody comes out to support anything that I'm involved in, whether it be something like the Rentals, or what I've done in the past with Weezer—I don't take it for granted," he says. "I've learned that from doing as many low-key solo tours as I've done after the second Rentals record. You really have to be appreciative of the fact that people don't have to spend their time with you." recommended