On paper this reads like a personal revolution: Matt Sharp, founding member of Weezer and lead proprietor of the Moog-flushed New Wave-revivalist project The Rentals, escapes to rural Tennessee, loses the coke-bottle rims, and re-colors his musical complexion by recording a catalogue of contemplative acoustic-based lamentations. Coming from my speakers, though, it sounds something more akin to a lunch-break sit-in than an emphatic compositional dethronement.
Even so, it would be easy to indulge one's self with such a storyline if one (read: overly fascinated Weezer fan) was so inclined, given the facts. Of the four primary records Sharp recorded in the 90s, three (Weezer, Pinkerton, Return of The Rentals) were nearly unqualified successes. His fourth, 1999's Seven More Minutes, was a hedonistic, uber-polished glamfest recorded in Europe with such indie royalty as Damon Albarn. The scene would certainly seem to be set for a dramatic introversion and grand stylistic makeover replete with a shirking of success. The resulting material reveals more of a half-truth.
Then again, perhaps I over calibrated, but when I read about "haunting," "sparse" and "spiritual" strains written with the intent of disestablishing the barriers between the performer and the listener, this is not at all what I envision. "Goodbye West Coast", the opener, is essentially a slow-drip Rentals melody carried by a little acoustic strumming and the requisite picking. The lullaby chorus is delicately anthemic and carried by another Sharp signature: multi-layered vocal tracking. Stir in the textured and glossy finish, and what results is a grayscale rendering of a Rentals color snapshot. Or maybe it's a B-side acoustic cover.
With an acoustic guitar, some sublevel ambience, and lap steel that functions as visceral persuasion in the same capacity a Moog would have, "Some Come Running Through" might suffer the same appraisal were it not for the marked attempt at achieving a countrified feel, most notably projected by Sharp's nasal Dylan-meets-Petty syllabic protractions. The final two songs operate within a similar framework with a few notable distractions, all three surpassing the five-minute mark, yet none providing justification for having done so. "Visions of Anna", with a lazy piano lead, dissolves into excess as Sharp dryly breathes out the line, "Visions of Anna make me cry," in such a way that makes it impossible for my mind not to conjure up the mental image of miss Norma Jean serenading our 35th President. "Hey, What You Gonna Do?" unfortunately uses a little bit of the sing-then-talk method to obviously irksome effect, and essentially obviates what might have been the most vital statement on the album.
Thematically, each of the four tracks deals with modest personal narratives of loss and regret. "Goodbye West Coast" explores the emotional weight of returning to a best friend's funeral, while the others relate a sort of can't-git-no-lower romantic portentousness. Such a disposition is probably most indicative of the motivation for the stylistic shift and change of climate. These humble songs, in the end, are chiefly innocuous, and perhaps the experience was even cathartic and therapeutic for Sharp, though most of this jury is too disinterested to return for a more thorough rendering when a full album of evidence is released in the future.
