The Rentals - 'Songs About Time'

When confronted with the sum of the Rentals’ Songs About Time project (four albums, 52 short films and a metric shit ton of photographs all somehow tying back into the passage of time), it becomes clear that Matt Sharp is insane. I think he’s a genius, but dude could’ve easily just dropped a third full-length under the Rentals moniker and I would have been fine with that. Instead, he spent 2009 releasing movies, EPs and photos at a breakneck pace online. After a couple of production delays, the entire project is finally available physically via a boxed set. Coupled with 12 bonus tracks, as well as a soundtrack to all of the films, Songs About Time is an epic mess. The asking price is a bit steep ($125. $275 gets you an even bigger set with vinyl and undeveloped film from the Photographs about Days portion), but there’s enough material presented to validate the set for hardcore fans. Newbies would be better off with the digital download, though.

Photographs About Days is the most consistently rewarding section. Every day, Sharp shot a roll of film, then put a photo up online. That’s about 14,000 pictures. A hand-bound book comes in the set with 52 prints of Sharp’s strongest pictures, although the entire 365 run can be viewed on the accompanying Films About Weeks DVD. Both the photos and films are in black and white, which suits Sharp’s style.

Less successful is the Films About Weeks DVD. Fifty-two films is a hell of a lot of material, and for the first half of the DVD, they amount to little more than behind-the-scenes footage. Occasionally the band whips up a quick story, but more frequently it’s just shots of them recording. The series was broken up into three seasons, each with a different language (Japanese, then Spanish, then French), essentially taking the concept behind the “Friends of P” video and stretching it across a year. Sometime around July, the videos start to improve – the cinematography gets a little more ambitious, stories start to evolve. But it takes such a long time to get to that point that most folks will probably tune out.

The portion that could have stood on its own, with perhaps a bit of editing, is the Songs About Time set. Originally released as three EPs online, each EP is now supplemented with four bonus tracks, while a fourth disc, Tokyo Blues, provides the soundtrack from Films About Weeks. Even with the bonus material, the EPs’ quality remains the same: The Story of a Thousand Seasons Past is still the best; The Future is still the worst. Story contains the biggest hooks (“Song of Remembering”) and the most emotional songs (“Seven Years,” “All I Have”). The bonus tracks are likewise catchy, and come closest to harkening back to the Rentals of yesteryear – pounding drums, ringing synths, a heavy bottom. It’s Time to Come Home gets a bit schmaltzier, but that works to the group’s advantage on the French version of “Late Night Confessions.” Where the band falls apart is on the barely there third disc, The Future. The songs are too thinly sketched out, and the use of a children’s choir to fill in the songs is kind of laughable. Tokyo Blues is a little more successful, isolating individual movements from the series and recasting them as scores for Films About Weeks. It’s good background music.

Songs About Time is ambitious to a fault. There’s enough good material presented that I no longer regret paying the $125 price tag (Then again, I also preordered it over a year ago). But it ultimately could have been a decent full-length. Cut out the excess footage and songs, and there could have been a great 12-track album with maybe a bonus video or two instead. I respect Sharp and co. for approaching this project, but it’s so inconsistent and expensive that only the most fervent members of the Rentals cult may be up to the task of processing all of this material.

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January One from The Rentals on Vimeo<

The Rentals - 'It's Time to Come Home'

July, the middle point of the year, calls for reflection. My dad traditionally declares the summer’s end after every Independence Day celebration. Fall is closer. And then winter. And then the end of the year, beginning another annual cycle, another slow death march to the grave, alone and forgotten. Plus, my Best Album of 2009 list is beginning to take form.

It’s July’s wistfulness in spite of its summery placement that makes it an appropriate month for the Rentals to release It’s Time to Come Home, chapter two in their Songs About Time project. This EP is all about regret (“Late Night Confessions”), nostalgia (“It’s Time to Come Home”), and longing (“Girls of the Metro”). Liner notes split into English and Spanish explain the songs’ histories. Like the band’s seminal release Seven More Minutes, both It’s Time to Come Home and its predecessor, Story of a Thousand Seasons, were conceived in Spain. That’s where the connections end, though.

Just as Seasons sounded mellower compared to 2007’s The Last Little Life EP, Home sounds even more subdued, weirdly recalling the barely there sound of frontman Matt Sharp’s solo material. While still a worthy purchase, it’s the slightest, perhaps least essential Rentals material to date.

The title track opens the album with bits of synth and steady drums before Lauren Chipman’s viola and heavy breathing lend the song some gravitas. “No Desire #2” follows in a similar electronic-heavy style, with slightly more propulsive percussion. “Girls of the Metro,” featuring Ozma vocalist/guitarist Ryan Slegr, is just as dreamy. Jamie Blake takes over on vocals for “Late Night Confessions,” a country-tinged lamentation. As sparse as the first three songs sound, the emergence of an acoustic guitar is actually startling. It also ends an already downplayed release on a depressing note.

It’s Time to Come Home is slight and bare, an EP that passes by rather quickly. The first three tracks blur together after a while. And while it’s not exactly a standout summer record, it is well-suited for a contemplative July.

The Rentals - 'Story of a Thousand Seasons'

Part one of The Rentals’ proposed three part Songs About Time project dropped this month with The Story of a Thousand Seasons EP, and with it a preorder for the whole shebang. 2009 finds The Rentals at their slimmest – Jamie Black, Lauren Chipman, Dan Joeright, and Matt Sharp, with Pixies alum Joey Santiago guesting on “Song of Remembering,” are all that remain from the band’s reunion on 2007’s The Last Little Life EP. It’s fitting, in that Thousand Seasons is easily the most stripped down Rentals release. Mellow and pretty, it downplays most of The Rentals previous strengths. It’s not nearly as synth-driven and the melodies are colder. And yet, The Story of a Thousand Seasons works.

It opens with “Song of Remembering,” an electronic ditty that doubles as Songs About Time’s pseudo-mission statement. The project revolves around three areas – music, photos (Photographs About Days), and short films (Films About Weeks). The band is shooting/posting a film for every week, and frontman Matt Sharp is snapping shots for every day of the year. Chipman hits a fantastic hook over an electronic drum beat – “Not everyone moves beyond the past / Everything moves / But outside these photographs everything dies / Cycles of time / Everyone is passing, passing, passing, passing through.” It’s sad and mournful and obsessive and beautiful. Which is kind of like the overall project; it’s an attempt to catch and catalog as much of 2009 as possible. Which more or less correlates with the title track, which follows.

“Story of a Thousand Seasons Past” adds another layer to the first song’s recordkeeping. Among shining piano and violin lines, Sharp bemoans how “we have this technology to send apologies that swim inside our heads.” He believes that this instant availability devalues communication – and he’s kind of right, ya Facebook stalkers – and settles for writing all his thoughts down, to be read at another date, when he’s more removed from the experience.

“All I Have” reaffirms the EP’s obsession with records of any sort, this time harkening back to Last Little Life’s synth-y indie rock while recalling the seduction of city streets that was best captured on Seven More Minutes. It’s the dreamiest of the new tracks, and an excellent segue into the last song, “Seven Years,” which is darn right driving compared to the more ethereal previous material.

The Story of a Thousand Seasons takes a few listens to warm up. It’s colder and more understated compared to Return of The Rentals or Seven More Minutes, and the hooks are less obvious. But that’s what gives it distinction. This EP edges into territory The Rentals never fully embraced before – the electronic music, guitar squalls, and honest-to-gosh piano on “Song of Remembering” certainly stand out. Time will tell whether or not this is the new direction of Songs About Time or just one avenue. Check out therentals.com to stream/purchase the tunes on mp3, FLAC, or CD. The next chapter is due in August.

regarding The Rentals in 2009

So while I've been sitting around like a schmuck trying to think of something nice to say about the new Ace Enders album and secretly waiting for the follow-up to 2007's The Last Little Life EP, Moog enthusiats The Rentals have been busy planning an ambitious multimedia artistic statement for 2009. Check out www.therentals.com for some info about Songs About Time, a title which reflects both the subject matter and the fact that, yeah, it is about time the world got some new Matt Sharp jams. The project consists of three main parts:

1. Photographs About Days - 365 photographs plus one roll of undeveloped film shot each day by Matt Sharp.
2. Films About Weeks - 52 short films with music and scores exclusive to the films.
3. Songs About Time - three mini-albums to be released in April, July, and October as digital downloads.

You can score these beauts in three formats:

1. Digital download
-DRM-free mp3s
-music videos
-digital artwork and computer-y thingies like wallpaper, banners, and icons

2. Limited edition box set
-multiple 180 gram vinyl box set
-original artwork
-DVD video collection of Films About Weeks
-CDs o' music
-The whole is individually numbered and autographed by The Rentals

3. Limited deluxe edition (a.k.a. - The one I fucking want. 365 copies will be produced. Please don't let this be a Ghosts I-IV all over again. My heart can't take it.)
-All the stuff from the box set
-One undeveloped roll of 35MM film taken by Matt Sharp for the project.
-Two V.I.P. backstage passes to an upcoming Rentals show of your choice.
-More info to come April 7.

If you join the band's mailing list (click "Music Store" on the site), they'll send you a free song from the project, "Fall Into Eve," plus some photos. The song is a brief instrumental, but it sounds gorgeous. So uh... go download it. Now.