Matt Sharp?!!!

Well, I know I promised this weeks ago, but I'm gonna give you this one first and the big one with Rachel later and folks, I'm just gonna let you know, this is more like a conversation between two people then an interview. And those are my favorite pieces to read. Plain old interviews are boring. All of my text is in bold, matt is plain old…well, plain old Matt. Enjoy!

You just reformed The Rentals a little while ago.

It's about a year and a half totally since the day I met Sara (Radle).

You did your solo album and EP, where they were more acoustic and relaxed. How did you come back to playing Moogs and doing that original Return Of The Rentals sound?

It was just a culmination of everything in life coming to that point. There's not really anything specific. More or less, it's just for everybody in the group, from Rachel to Sara to Lauren to Ben to Dan, we all just had to be at a certain place in our lives to want to do what we're doing. Certainly there were just a whole lot of people who contributed to that though. Tegan & Sara certainly helped with that.

Doing the tour with them.

I did a tour and I did 12 songs on their album and really just enjoyed that process of being with them, and I guess that was kind of a gradual step to leading us back to where we are at now. For a long time, I wasn't in a place where I even really thought about doing this kind of music. Now it just feels right, it feels natural.

I'm not sure if anyone's ever asked this, and I don't know if you feel this way or see it this way, but what do you think of Weezer and The Rentals both taking sort of the same path? In that, both bands had successful first albums, cult status second albums and then both bands falling off the radar. You left after Pinkerton to work on The Rentals and then to have them fall apart. And then to have both bands come back.

I've never even thought about that, this is the first time anybody's mentioned it. While those first two Rentals records were done in such similar periods to where Weezer was. The first record was done before we released the first Weezer album, most of Return Of was written and recorded somewhere around the time we were recording The Blue Album, so those lines are very blurry for me.

So no definite line?

No definite line. We finished the album somewhere in between some Weezer touring and we were touring with that dog. a lot at that time and that's all in there together, scrambled up. Seven More Minutes and Pinkerton, the day I finished doing my backup vocal tracks for Pinkerton, which were the last thing I did on the album, that next day I was on a plane going to London to start Seven More Minutes.

Which you recorded mostly in Europe right?

Yeah, we recorded almost all of it there. I went from the studio, basically, to a taxicab, to an airport, to another taxi cab…

They said, "Cut!" and you were out of there.

…yeah, literally, we went from L.A. to the airport to a cab to the studio in London and it was like that same day that we started getting into the studio for Seven More Minutes. So those records are really on top of each other. We recorded a majority of that album, stopped so I could go on the road for Pinkerton and promoting that record with those guys and it's all and then came back…

It's all jumbled together?

…yeah, those are all intertwined. We were like all in very similar places at that time, our ideologies, Rivers and mine…I know he was, I can't speak for him, but I know he was a huge influence on my life and we grew up together essentially.

You went from, basically, the beginning of adult hood to close to now.

Especially the first album, he had a big impact on…

Songwriting?

…yeah, or just "Look at my friend just doing it", writing really great songs. We all talked about it for a long time and I was really just inspired by his abilities and gifts.

About coming back to The Rentals sound.

All those things, they're never singular. It's really easy to write about in a one line, this person or that person were inspiring.

But that's not real life.

Yeah, not for me. Especially with the way I think about the creative process, it's just all important to me. When we were the solo album I made (Matt Sharp), for me it was the environment and the people around me, the person that worked at the country kitchen or whatever, the girl I used to talk to every day there…just that kind of stuff is as much of an influence…

Those daily conversations and everything?

…yeah, everything. And I feel that way now, the people who are generous enough to be apart of our group, they have a huge impact on me. Even if they're not on stage with us, I feel they contribute to what we're doing. All that stuff might really sound cliché. Some of my friends who go on these artistic journeys, some of them have gone onto these pursuits for crystalline, perfect credit, where they can say this person is responsible for this whatever. The thing I really learned from going on tour, either on my own or with a very sparse lineup doing the solo stuff, whatever the situation is, you are in collaboration with somebody. If you're just by yourself with an acoustic guitar, you're working with the sound person and that has a huge impact.

It's a give and go.

And the audience and that kind of stuff. I know for us, how involved the audience is really, it has an impact on the show. If people really don't feel like…

Jumping Around?

…jumping around, dancing and singing, we're gonna play a different way, it might not be necessarily be worse or better for me.

What's it like being on this tour? (at the time, still only 2 weeks in). I'd assume you'd consider Chicago a win, because everyone was in the palm of your hand tonight.

Tonight is a good idea of how elements have nothing to do with anybody in the group. The heat really affected the audience tonight, it affected us. If we had just had air conditioning, that show would have had a completely different feeling to it. It gets a little out there talking about it in those terms, but it all has an impact. Whatever it is, and we've been chasing the sun the whole tour and we have just been in every city with them going "This is the hottest it's been in the history of whatever town we're in". Everywhere we go, they're saying that. And every day we look at the weather report and it's saying it's gonna cool down after we leave.

The heat index for today was 115 and tomorrow is going to be 86.

Yeah, everywhere. Maybe that's good news for Chicago and tomorrow will be cool. But it was really brutal, we took a song out of the set.

"Jumping Around' right?

There's no way in hell, that song would have seemed like four hours in that heat, and I like to make that one stretched out a bit if we can, kind of approach it more…improvisational.

Kind of like "Move On" was tonight?

Yeah, but even more than that. When we started doing it, it was really adventurous and I think we're in a place where we're not taking many chances, but I'm hoping to break though that. But tonight I was like "Forget that", forget tonight's experiment. But I want this group to feel like we can do that. Lauren does a lot of viola and I just give her spaces in the set to just go where she wants to go, just things that are on her own…

Like "Today, I'm gonna play it like this!"

She just does whatever, like one of her…this is gonna sound like hoity-toity and stuff, but one of the violinists she came up with in orchestra was at one of the shows, so she started to do this Mozart solo for viola and violin, she did these references to it and stuff like that and I could just see the connection and glances and I love that freedom.

Then, they had to move the bus! DUH DUH DUHHHHHHH!

This is probably where we have to stop, it's for your safety, haha.

No problem man, it was great meeting you.

Nice meeting you too.

And that was it folks. Matt didn't have to do that interview, but was gracious enough to spare me some of his time. The next interview will be up soon and with a ton of pictures. But for now, you get just this and not the full story. But it will be soon!