Pitchfork

No more waiting...the Rentals' return is on. Today, Matt Sharp's synth-pop band announced that it has scheduled the initial shows of its first worldwide tour in a decade. This July, after a couple of warm-up shows in California, they'll head to Japan for a pair of arena gigs. Here's what the Rentals' itinerary looks like right now:

7-02 Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern
7-07 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre *
7-16 Yokohama, Japan - Yokohama Arena (Nano Mugen Festival) #
7-17 Yokohama, Japan - Yokohama Arena (Nano Mugen Festival) #

* with Ozma
# with Asian Kung-Fu Generation

Yesterday, Pitchfork spoke to Matt Sharp, and the former Weezer bassist outlined the rest of the Rentals' touring plans: "We're going to come back and do a limited amount of shows in the U.S. We're not going to cover the whole thing, but we're probably going to do the major markets, and do some shows in Canada in the major Canadian markets, and then maybe do a little bit in Europe, a few of the major markets in Europe. That's still pending at the moment. But we're crossing our fingers."

The band is also scheduled to perform at this summer's Sonorama Festival in Burgos, Spain, which takes place August 18 and 19. "A very big part of my heart lives in Spain," Sharp said. "At times I almost feel like I'm Antonio Banderas' son or something."

In addition to Sharp, the current Rentals lineup features founding member Rachel Haden (formerly of that dog!), as well as the following newbies: vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Sara Radle (multi-inst/vocals), "synth master" Ben Pringle, vocalist/viola player Lauren Chipman, and drummer Dan Joeright.

"Everybody in the group essentially multitasks all the time," Sharp explained. "Everybody has a little piano experience, plays synthesizers, plays acoustic guitar...There's so many different combinations of things to explore within the group dynamic, and the feeling that I have with this group is that these people are really heavyweights. And we're trying to do things the right way and with a lot of integrity, and build a real family."

Although Sharp has been sporadically working on new material, the focus for the Rentals at the moment is perfecting new arrangements of songs from the Rentals' back catalog, drawing from the band's two albums, 1995's Return of the Rentals and 1999's Seven More Minutes. "A lot of it is reworking those old songs to represent the possibility of where we're going," Sharp said. "Some of it feels very new to me. Some of the older songs from the first album have taken on a totally new life. They have a real sense of where we're going. And part of it is challenging, and a challenge that I'm willing to meet."

The world tour will focus primarily on old songs; after the band returns to their home base in California, they'll concentrate on the next album.

Sharp attributes his decision to resurrect the Rentals to "really just a combination of a lot of different things coming together." "Having certain people come into my life at the right times, and the support of other people, sort of helped me get on that path," he said. "It just seemed like that's where we should be, and this is what we should be doing. And it just felt like the natural place for us to be."

He added that his former Weezer bandmate, Rivers Cuomo, was especially influential. "I think probably I saw Rivers less than a year ago, and he was really kind," Sharp said. "He's been one of the big people for me, who have been very supportive, going, 'that's what you should be doing with your life'...in the sense of writing pop music again."

Sharp spent a good part of the past few years concentrating on acoustic-centric solo material, releasing the Puckett's Versus the Country Boy EP in 2003 and a self-titled album in 2004. He saw himself headed in a more experimental direction, before the intervention of Cuomo and others.

"The average length of the songs on the solo record are probably seven minutes long," he said. "And I think I probably would have gone further in that direction, and I may return there at some point. I've always had the desire to end up finding a place in the world that's like [Talk Talk's] Spirit of Eden record, and where there's three songs on the album and it's still a full length album. And I was probably heading more and more into that place.

"Rivers and I got to spend some time doing some writing together, and he really started talking to me about writing more concise songs, that expressed a lot with a lot of economy. Instead of doing what I had been doing, which was taking as much time as you want to say what you need to say. And there were a lot of really good things that came out of those times that we spent together. There's too many people who have had an influence on why I'm at where I'm at, to say there's a single person like that. But there's certainly a part of it in there that he shares."

Sharp also credits Canadian sister duo Tegan and Sara, with whom he has toured and recorded, with helping him get on the path he's pursuing today. "They really helped me with the way they just conduct themselves," he said. "Those guys have more integrity than any group I've ever been around. The way that everybody that's involved with them are kind and generous...that stuff is coming from the core, and it's everybody that's involved with them, it's not just them, it's every member of the group, every member of their management, people that are selling their tee shirts; whatever it is, they all have that real graciousness to them."

Check out the Rentals remix of Tegan and Sara's "Walking With a Ghost" on the Rentals website.