The Rentals -- Hipster Music

The Rentals

The Last Little Life EP

What happened to the fun robotic thing? This ain't Cold War music anymore; it's mid-nineties prog rock. It's mellow folks in their mid-thirties making music for I don't know who. It sounds like a less dynamic Traveling Wilburys with some keyboard. I'd almost say it was kid-friendly in its sing-songy cutesiness. Totally inoffensive and boring, my wallpaper might enjoy mating with it. Take like a later Ben Lee album and beat it within an inch of its life and you have this EP. I'm not really sure what that means, but it isn't good. I hope this was just kind of them testing the waters, and that when/if they put out their next LP that it'll have more life than this puny attempt at cliched barfiness.

Return of the Rentals

Weezer really never was the same after Matt Sharp left the band. Sharp took with him all the quirky fun--and those wonderful keyboards. The Rentals, in fact, are pretty dependent on those same Moogs, which give them a kind of distinctive retro sound that when paired with fuzzed out guitars and some sweet girl harmonies make for a sound that was actually ahead of its time. It really wasn't until several years after this album came out that the 80s revival hit its full stride, but these guys took the more throw-back sounds of Weezer, paired then with the cuteness of that dog and came out the other end with this funny 80s meets Sputnik space-age persona that was hipster before people really knew what hispsterism was. Nerd-chic, maybe? "Friends of P" was their kind of one minor hit, and even listening to it today brings waves of nostalgia flowing back into the mushy parts of my brain--and makes me want to see a Weezer reunion now worse than ever. C'mon, dorks, unite!