Photo credit: Brantley GutierrezMatt Sharp has been crafting the new Rentals album Lost In Alphaville, working on it from New York City to Nashville to New Orleans to Los Angeles. The record releases August 26 via Polyvinyl, so this past winter I headed west to Los Angeles and spent time with the former Weezer bassist. We did it all: played cornhhole in his yard, watched the Super Bowl, and listened to his new album.Lost In Alphaville, the third Rentals LP and first since 1999, is a dreamy gem of a record, backed by a strong crew of musicians such as Patrick Carney (The Black Keys), Ryen Slegr (Ozma), Lauren Chipman (Section Quartet), and the lush voices of Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe (Lucius). Sharp and I talked about The Rentals record over the course of several months, breakfasts, concerts, and phone calls. This is our conversation condensed.The Rentals perform this weekend in Yokohama, Japan at the Nano-Mugen Festival. North American dates will be announced soon.Noisey: How did Lucius get involved?
Matt Sharp: The whole record was recorded in a backwards approach where I worked with everybody one on one and out of sequence, so I could basically focus on them and understand who they are and how this whole thing could fit together. Lucius was the very last piece of the puzzle. Before they were involved, the album was done, and it was a matter of finding the right voices to put the period on the end of this sentence or this novel or whatever it is. I went through a bunch of different thoughts on how to approach that and thinking about all the female vocalists I have an affinity for, and with each person I reached out and thought about who they are and how they could possibly fit in. That part of it went on for quite some time. I listened to so many people that it all started to sound like one voice. I went so far down the rabbit hole. Finally I heard Lucius and threw everything into meeting them and talking to them. The next thing I knew we were working together.So they responded right away to your interest?
They were in the middle of doing press and radio for their own record. I just wanted to get into a room with them and I knew there was some way to figure it out but I would need to be there with them in the same room. They suggested modern ways of communication like Skype and none of that appealed to me. So I brought my whole studio on the plane to NYC, put my monitors in the overhead and showed up in New York, met them for the first time and we started listening to the music, then everything clicked in place. They instantly had a lot of questions and feedback and I figured there must be some way to figure this out.My career in music has been a lot of collaborating with female vocalists…how important are female vocals in the songs you write?
They're essential to The Rentals and the lyrical content and the balance of the more aggressive elements to the music. Like you, I've had a long history of trying to figure out that collaboration. I was just up in northern California at the Polyvinyl offices and I was having major flashbacks of just starting to figure out what is music and the very first steps of what do I want to make and I had no confidence in singing my own songs so I thought first thing I gotta do is find a female vocalist. I knew that's what I wanted to do I just didn't know how to get there. I remember the first girl I met with, the first thing she said was "What I picture is when we're onstage, a bird will fly in from the right side of the stage and land on my shoulder." I thought that was amazing. Before we had any idea what music it would be, this key element of the bird would need to happen. So that was probably the first time I had to deal with working with the opposite sex and all that kind of stuff.I think some of the best pop songs are written with male and female vocals intertwined. Something I admire about this album is how much time you took to find precisely the right fit regarding these vocalists.
The search went on for so long. Once I ended up in New York and working with Lucius I could not escape the feeling of how perfect it was to be there with them and to have them be such a strong part of it. It was important to me to have two singers, if possible, because it's something that's been a key part to the first two Rentals albums. They can be soft and airy but they can also lose themselves and go into some pretty strange improvisations, in a way that I really enjoy. Some of my favorite moments on this album are when they go beyond the melodies and the harmonies and they just start making odd sounds…getting their primal instincts on.The first time I listened to your record was at your house post-Superbowl…
(Laughs). Perfect post-Superbowl music.I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable about making us all listen to it, but I did, I made us all listen to it.
I have that feeling of where the record is still mine, for the next couple months, up until it's an officially released thing in some physical or digital form. I still have that feeling of us listening to that album, having people come over in the room with me and having it played and presented to them as a single piece of music and listening to it in a cinematic way like watching a movie. If I had my way I'd have everyone listen to it as one continuous thing the first time they listen to it.Regarding sequencing, not everyone is not going to hear this record start to finish…
You know that's the way of the world. I don't really care people will hear it out of order. The only thing for me is how I want to hear things. The thing that gets me the most excited about music is the things that are really beautiful, thought out sequences. There are a ton of records like that for me where you just go "Oh, holy hell" like the Bridge Over Troubled Water album by Simon and Garfunkel, and you hear such strange and bold choices the engineer made. It doesn't matter if this record will be consumed in different ways, it's just that is the best way I know to get where I want to go.
Sharp and Pfenning share coffee and hot sauce.Time. Maybe I'm making this up, but do you have some obsession with time?
The album itself to me is basically a sequel to the last Rentals record. The last record was all written about a place and a time and very specific to a period of my life spending a lot of time in Barcelona. This album is…I went back to that place, many years later, ten years after the fact, and went back to the place where all the songs on the second Rentals record were written about. Basically these songs are just being there and dealing with the fact of coming back to a city where you spent your youth at and going "God who was I at that point in my life" and "Who am I now" and the time since then to now. That's why these particular songs were important to me, they pick up the story from that point.I cant help but think about it in some sense of the continuation of a story some film director would have made ten years before and say, “Well, where are our characters now?”Where is Alphaville? How can I get there?
[Laughs.] I don't know if that's a place where you want to go. It's, in a sense, stuck in a thought. Lost in a place where everything started. Maybe not being able to move past that point. I don't know if that's a particular desirous place to want to land. I just spent a good amount of time there. The title of the album, the artwork, the sequence of the songs was all there before we started recording. It was all a big journey. Ultimately I just wanted the thing to kick up some dust and kick the shit out of the universe.How has Patrick Carney influenced this record?
I just love that son of a bitch. When I took the record to him I was thinking about the record in a science-fiction Blade Runner sort of programmed, uber cold, old drum machines—but some of the songs didn't work that way and I had never programmed anything before so I was trying to come up with my own approach. For years we had talked about doing something together and when I called Patrick I wasn't sure if he'd even be interested in working together but he was like "Get your ass here now!" He had no hesitation. I think he was very responsible for that part of the energy of the album where it was like, "Hit record, let's go" and it just changed the preciousness of the album and made it more nasty and made it more aggressive.I love it when musical dreams come true. It sounds like he came into your life.
Yeah he just fucked shit up! He just started knocking shit over. Yeah, I love it.What are you listening to right now?
I'm listening to two things right now. I'm listening to these Beethoven piano sonatas. I like to run to them, keeping them really really low in my headphones so I can just barely hear it and just watch people. That and Tupac.
Photo credit: Brantley GutierrezI was told you play ultimate frisbee once a week?
[Laughs]. I don't know if this is true or not. You could get killed for this shit. You know one of the first Rentals songs we made but never released, just on a four track back in the day on of of those Tascam four tracks, it was called "Frisbee days." It was a song about playing frisbee in Central Park and eating Indian food.You seem like a healthy guy. I think I woke up one morning at your place and you said "I'm off to yoga."
I almost never do yoga. When Weezer was starting I remember going to New York to do the Blue album and Rivers and I had a membership at some gym and we had a competition with each other who could have a mustache for longer and who could last longer without shaving it, and this was way pre-ironic-indie-hipster-mustaches—or something like that. But we would go to the gym, and we would end up in that mode for like three hours before recording, just getting in that mode, gaining more creative thought and energy and explosiveness.Last question. Lost at sea, stuck on an island, who would you choose to be with?
Lucius and Novak Djokovic. Two ladies and a tennis pro. Djokovic, and Holly and Jess. If I could write songs with Jess and Holly and play tennis all day, I don't know if I would be wanting too much more than that.Aaron Pfenning is a musician and founding member of Chairlift. He's on Twitter — @aaronpfenning--I Saw a Weezer Cover Band Perform in Williamsburg and Realized We Are All Rivers CuomoWatch Some Guy Try to Rap Battle Rivers Cuomo on the Weezer Cruise
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Matt Sharp: The whole record was recorded in a backwards approach where I worked with everybody one on one and out of sequence, so I could basically focus on them and understand who they are and how this whole thing could fit together. Lucius was the very last piece of the puzzle. Before they were involved, the album was done, and it was a matter of finding the right voices to put the period on the end of this sentence or this novel or whatever it is. I went through a bunch of different thoughts on how to approach that and thinking about all the female vocalists I have an affinity for, and with each person I reached out and thought about who they are and how they could possibly fit in. That part of it went on for quite some time. I listened to so many people that it all started to sound like one voice. I went so far down the rabbit hole. Finally I heard Lucius and threw everything into meeting them and talking to them. The next thing I knew we were working together.
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They were in the middle of doing press and radio for their own record. I just wanted to get into a room with them and I knew there was some way to figure it out but I would need to be there with them in the same room. They suggested modern ways of communication like Skype and none of that appealed to me. So I brought my whole studio on the plane to NYC, put my monitors in the overhead and showed up in New York, met them for the first time and we started listening to the music, then everything clicked in place. They instantly had a lot of questions and feedback and I figured there must be some way to figure this out.My career in music has been a lot of collaborating with female vocalists…how important are female vocals in the songs you write?
They're essential to The Rentals and the lyrical content and the balance of the more aggressive elements to the music. Like you, I've had a long history of trying to figure out that collaboration. I was just up in northern California at the Polyvinyl offices and I was having major flashbacks of just starting to figure out what is music and the very first steps of what do I want to make and I had no confidence in singing my own songs so I thought first thing I gotta do is find a female vocalist. I knew that's what I wanted to do I just didn't know how to get there. I remember the first girl I met with, the first thing she said was "What I picture is when we're onstage, a bird will fly in from the right side of the stage and land on my shoulder." I thought that was amazing. Before we had any idea what music it would be, this key element of the bird would need to happen. So that was probably the first time I had to deal with working with the opposite sex and all that kind of stuff.
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The search went on for so long. Once I ended up in New York and working with Lucius I could not escape the feeling of how perfect it was to be there with them and to have them be such a strong part of it. It was important to me to have two singers, if possible, because it's something that's been a key part to the first two Rentals albums. They can be soft and airy but they can also lose themselves and go into some pretty strange improvisations, in a way that I really enjoy. Some of my favorite moments on this album are when they go beyond the melodies and the harmonies and they just start making odd sounds…getting their primal instincts on.The first time I listened to your record was at your house post-Superbowl…
(Laughs). Perfect post-Superbowl music.I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable about making us all listen to it, but I did, I made us all listen to it.
I have that feeling of where the record is still mine, for the next couple months, up until it's an officially released thing in some physical or digital form. I still have that feeling of us listening to that album, having people come over in the room with me and having it played and presented to them as a single piece of music and listening to it in a cinematic way like watching a movie. If I had my way I'd have everyone listen to it as one continuous thing the first time they listen to it.
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You know that's the way of the world. I don't really care people will hear it out of order. The only thing for me is how I want to hear things. The thing that gets me the most excited about music is the things that are really beautiful, thought out sequences. There are a ton of records like that for me where you just go "Oh, holy hell" like the Bridge Over Troubled Water album by Simon and Garfunkel, and you hear such strange and bold choices the engineer made. It doesn't matter if this record will be consumed in different ways, it's just that is the best way I know to get where I want to go.
The album itself to me is basically a sequel to the last Rentals record. The last record was all written about a place and a time and very specific to a period of my life spending a lot of time in Barcelona. This album is…I went back to that place, many years later, ten years after the fact, and went back to the place where all the songs on the second Rentals record were written about. Basically these songs are just being there and dealing with the fact of coming back to a city where you spent your youth at and going "God who was I at that point in my life" and "Who am I now" and the time since then to now. That's why these particular songs were important to me, they pick up the story from that point.
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[Laughs.] I don't know if that's a place where you want to go. It's, in a sense, stuck in a thought. Lost in a place where everything started. Maybe not being able to move past that point. I don't know if that's a particular desirous place to want to land. I just spent a good amount of time there. The title of the album, the artwork, the sequence of the songs was all there before we started recording. It was all a big journey. Ultimately I just wanted the thing to kick up some dust and kick the shit out of the universe.How has Patrick Carney influenced this record?
I just love that son of a bitch. When I took the record to him I was thinking about the record in a science-fiction Blade Runner sort of programmed, uber cold, old drum machines—but some of the songs didn't work that way and I had never programmed anything before so I was trying to come up with my own approach. For years we had talked about doing something together and when I called Patrick I wasn't sure if he'd even be interested in working together but he was like "Get your ass here now!" He had no hesitation. I think he was very responsible for that part of the energy of the album where it was like, "Hit record, let's go" and it just changed the preciousness of the album and made it more nasty and made it more aggressive.
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Yeah he just fucked shit up! He just started knocking shit over. Yeah, I love it.What are you listening to right now?
I'm listening to two things right now. I'm listening to these Beethoven piano sonatas. I like to run to them, keeping them really really low in my headphones so I can just barely hear it and just watch people. That and Tupac.
[Laughs]. I don't know if this is true or not. You could get killed for this shit. You know one of the first Rentals songs we made but never released, just on a four track back in the day on of of those Tascam four tracks, it was called "Frisbee days." It was a song about playing frisbee in Central Park and eating Indian food.You seem like a healthy guy. I think I woke up one morning at your place and you said "I'm off to yoga."
I almost never do yoga. When Weezer was starting I remember going to New York to do the Blue album and Rivers and I had a membership at some gym and we had a competition with each other who could have a mustache for longer and who could last longer without shaving it, and this was way pre-ironic-indie-hipster-mustaches—or something like that. But we would go to the gym, and we would end up in that mode for like three hours before recording, just getting in that mode, gaining more creative thought and energy and explosiveness.Last question. Lost at sea, stuck on an island, who would you choose to be with?
Lucius and Novak Djokovic. Two ladies and a tennis pro. Djokovic, and Holly and Jess. If I could write songs with Jess and Holly and play tennis all day, I don't know if I would be wanting too much more than that.Aaron Pfenning is a musician and founding member of Chairlift. He's on Twitter — @aaronpfenning--I Saw a Weezer Cover Band Perform in Williamsburg and Realized We Are All Rivers CuomoWatch Some Guy Try to Rap Battle Rivers Cuomo on the Weezer Cruise