The Rentals Sign to Polyvinyl for First Album in 15 Years
The Rentals, the band formed and fronted by former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp, have signed to Polyvinyl and will release a new full-length album in 2014. “I am beyond thrilled to announce @therentals have just signed with my favorite record company @Polyvinyl,” Sharp wrote on Twitter.
The still-untitled record will be the band’s first since 1999’s Seven More Minutes and was recorded in Los Angeles, Nashville and New Orleans. Like previous Rentals records, this one finds Sharp working with a slew of different musicians, including the Black Keys‘ Patrick Carney on drums, Lucius’ Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig on vocals, Ryen Slegr of Ozma on guitar and Lauren Chipman of the Section Quartet playing viola and piano.
Find Out How Matt Sharp and Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo Buried the Hatchet
Sharp formed the Rentals in 1995 and they released their debut album, Return of the Rentals, that same year; the record achieved moderate success thanks to first single “Friends of P,” which peaked at Number Seven on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. Following Sharp’s departure from Weezer in 1998, the Rentals released their second album, Seven More Minutes, which featured contributions from Blur‘s Damon Albarn and even backing vocals from former Saturday Night Live cast member Maya Rudolph (who also briefly toured with the group).
After the Rentals disbanded after their tour for Seven More Minutes, Sharp embarked on a solo career and released two LPs, 2003’s Puckett’s Versus the Country Boy and 2004’s Matt Sharp. During that time, he filed and settled a lawsuit with Weezer over songwriting royalties and began to patch up his contentious relationship with frontman Rivers Cuomo. Sharp reformed the Rentals in 2005, and over the next few years, they released four mini-albums as part of a multimedia project called Songs About Time.