Weezerpedia:Today's featured article/October 24, 2008

Buddyhead.com interview with Matt Sharp - Late 1999 After a few weeks of playing phone tag with some record company big-wigs at Maverick, and waiting fro the band to return from their short trip to Japan, we managed to finally catch up with The Rentals' indescribable Matt Sharp. As I drove out of Hollywood and up the hill into Laurel Canyon (which is only a few blocks north of Sunset Blvd.), I noticed how secluded it was up there. No wonder everyone wants to live here. It's only a short distance from the hustle and bustle known as Hollywood, yet you can barely hear the traffic through the trees. I felt like I was at some mountain resort as I sat down with Matt over some orange juice at the "country market", where we discussed Japanese freak outs, fights with Weezer, and the new Rentals record.

Buddyhead: What do you think inspired the evolution of The Rentals from the first record, which gives off one basic vibe, to Seven More Minutes which is very much eclectic and diverse?

Matt: I think the main difference between the two records is that we let the songs go wherever they wanted to go on the new record (Seven More Minutes). We didn't put up any borders or restrictions like we did on the first record. If one song wanted to be a country song, we let it be a country song. If one song wanted to be really new-wave song, or even a more aggressive song, or whatever, we let to it go wherever it wanted to go. So it wasn't like we had to fit all these songs into one mold or the exact same format of production.

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