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.” 