The Rentals, The Last Little Life EP

I honestly didn’t figure it’d ever happen. Once Weezer bassist Matt Sharp’s side project-turned-fulltime gig The Rentals faded from view, I assumed, somewhat sadly, that, well, that was it. Return of the Rentals was the tongue-in-cheek, impenetrably poppy retro-future album, and followup Seven More Minutes felt like Sharp giving the finger to everybody and everything in the L.A. scene and kissing even his new (relatively) band goodbye.

And that, essentially, is what it turned out to be. Sharp fell off the face of the planet, moving back home to his rural roots and going kinda country in the process. He did some home recording, the results of which ended up as the “eh” Puckett’s Versus the Country Boy, and that seemed to pretty much be it. No more rockstar dreams, just a guy who was happy to hang out at his house in the woods and not be anybody other than Matt Sharp, country boy who’s fled the city. The Rentals were as dead and buried as the remains of Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo’s humility.

Or maybe not. Now, just about a decade on, Sharp’s resurrected the band, albeit with only himself and Rachel Haden as holdovers from The Rentals Mk. I or II (no Petra Haden this time out, sorry). The new folks are all L.A.-area musos, looks like, with ex-Nerf Herder Ben Pringle on synths, trombone, and guitar, in-demand classical player Lauren Chipman on viola and synths (she’s apparently played with everybody from Barry Manilow to Rosie Thomas), and all-round session-type guy and Random A.O.K. headman Dan Joeright on drums and percussion. The big surprise, though, at least for yours truly, was guitarist/singer/pianist/etc. Sara Radle, formerly of San Antonio and the once-truly-awesome pop-punk band Lucy Loves Schroeder. Wow; great band, but I’d totally forgotten about ’em until I saw Radle’s name in the credits. At any rate, the reconstituted band’s touring, and in advance of the tour, they’ve tossed out this, The Last Little Life EP, as a bit of a teaser of what this new incarnation’s all about. Will wonders never cease?

And maybe it’s appropriate that it’s a whole new crew this time, given that The Rentals that appear on The Last Little Life are nowhere even in the neighborhood of the “band”‘s previous stuff. Lead track “Last Romantic Day” sets the tone — it’s jangly and yearning, with some nice warbly keys floating in and out (and no, they really don’t ever come back on the subsequent tracks), and is reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub’s sweet/melancholy pastoralism more than it is either “Friends of P” or “Barcelona.” That said, it’s a great song, and second track “Little Bit of You in Everything” builds upon it, a reassuringly cheery, beautiful little duet. The (faux?) cockiness, the sarcastic rockstar poses, the jaded in-joke feel, it’s all gone, replaced by a seemingly genuine romanticism. Oh, and there’s a bit of the country influence still left over from the Puckett’s days, to boot.

In the end analysis, this EP sure makes it sound like Sharp’s spent the intervening years doing a lot of growing up and examining things, and that maturity’s worked its way into the music. Heck, he even gets a little grumpy-old-man-ish near the end of “Little Bit of You in Everything,” where the female vocalist (can’t tell if it’s Haden, Chipman, or Radle, since everybody apparently sings) asks, a little exasperated: “Tell me one thing / That’s worth saving / From this nameless / Generation?”

The EP ends with a new version of the Rentals’ classic “Sweetness and Tenderness,” but unfortunately, it’s the one track that feels like a real step backwards — it’s a much more “organic,” non-electronic, and decidedly non-rock take on the song, and sadly, it’s just “eh.” It’s not godawful or anything, no, but it can’t hold a candle to the original. The original had a fire, earnest and impassioned, that this version lacks, instead feeling sort of lazy and summer-day sleepy.

So let’s move back a track, to “Life Without a Brain”; it’s a little near to some of the music on Seven More Minutes, but not in a bad way. The song incorporates some nice horns and strings, as well as an aww-shucks feel to it. It’s funny, though — while the song’s essentially an ode to putting things off, it almost seems like it’s Sharp acknowledging that he’ll be back. Hell, I hope so.