The Rentals: Seven More Minutes

At first, few things would seem less essential than a Weezer side project, but Matt Sharp's debut as leader of The Rentals made the best of its disposability. Slickly produced and dressed in gooey synths, the group's 1995 album Return Of The Rentals was lovably cheesy, an over-the-top pop record that was both giddily engaging and cloying enough to give you a toothache. You certainly wouldn't expect it to take four years for The Rentals to assemble a follow-up, but it did, and the new Seven More Minutes is ambitious enough to explain why: It shifts wildly in tone, instrumentation, and gadgetry, with guest stars from Blur's Damon Albarn to Weezer's Rivers Cuomo. It's just too bad the results don't always justify the trickery. "Getting By" opens the record on an enjoyably familiar note, with a characteristically sunny synth hook, a Petra Haden backing vocal, and a chorus that's as subtle as a hammer sandwich. It's a fine welcome-back, but Seven More Minutes rarely has that much fun again. The morose, mid-tempo "She Says It's Alright" and the even-gloomier "Say Goodbye Forever" are okay but never add up to much, while the vaguely hip-hop-influenced "Big Daddy C." is a bit of a clunker. With its loopy vocal effects, "The Cruise" is quirky enough to hold your attention, and "My Head Is In The Sun" and "Overlee" are the best of the surprisingly frequent ballads. But the album as a whole is too frustrating—for every breezy "Barcelona" or "Hello, Hello," there's an ill-conceived "The Man With Two Brains"—to warrant unabashed recommendation. In a year that's rapidly filling with consistently great pop records (Fountains Of Wayne, Jason Falkner), Seven More Minutes ought to have been another sure thing, but it's only sporadically as sharp as it should have been.