The Rentals have released Teen Beat Cosmonaut, the latest single lifted from their forthcoming album ‘Q36’. On Teen Beat Cosmonaut, which clocks in at under three and a half minutes, they pack in a full-on, vintage MOOG synthesizer freakout, sprawling cinematic FX-laden electric guitar landscapes, operatic, choral, arm-in-arm sing-a-long, and grandiose, symphonic crescendo, all bursting into a silly little technicolor fantasy about a former teen idol and astronaut named “Steve.”
The band shared the song’s animated lyric video, created by Lucius guitarist Peter Lalish. Watch it via YouTube below.
The Rentals will release ‘Q36,’ their epic, outer space, super saga of an album, on June 2. Since November of last year, they have shared a new song from the 16-track double album every two weeks. Teen Beat Cosmonaut is the ninth release from the album, and like its eight predecessors, it has inspired a host of unique and compelling collaborations.
To create the song’s lyric video, inspired by the band’s partnership with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s online creative community HITRECORD, Sharp invited Lalish, the independent composer, illustrator and Lucius member, to collaborate on a series of rapid-fire illustration challenges. Sharp challenged Pete to create 45 unique illustrations around the song’s playful lyrics within a 4-hour window. Each individual line was written sequentially on a Post-It note and then stuck to an ordinary piece of white typewriter paper that had been divided into two sections. Sharp encouraged Pete to read each Post-It, then draw the first thing that popped into his head at the top of the page. If he liked his first thought, he should move on to the next note; if he thought he could prove upon it, he could use the bottom half of the page, but that was it—the challenge was limited to two attempts.
“My recent work with the Joe’s community has been a huge inspiration for the way The Rentals are finding new ways to collaborate with amazing artists like Pete and other gifted artists like designer Ivan Minsloff,” Sharp said. “I’ve been a huge fan of Ivan’s, for past 6 years or more. Before we started releasing the new songs, I reached out to him in the hope he would be interested in starting a new creative partnership. I sent him all the lyrics to the album to use as a kind of creative ‘diving board’ and encourage him he could create one new design for each individual song, using whatever word or lyric resonated with him personally. It didn’t have to be literal or promote the band or song in anyway. If he connected with a word or a phrase or just some overall feelings, I wanted him to try and use that connection as an excuse to create something new.”
The only limitation Sharp put on Minsloff’s designs (t-shirts, movie posters, hoodies or tote bags), was to request that each unique item only be available for two weeks and two weeks only, believing that this limited window would encourage them both to make something altogether more vital and alive.
“I believe that challenges and limitations, just like this lyric video with Pete, will lead us to create something that is, hopefully, not too precious and that has a greater sense of urgency than we might have otherwise have made, if we took a moment to think about it,” continues Sharp. “Sunday, we had nothing but a song, a pen, a handful of typewriter paper and some Post-It notes. But then fewer than 12 hours later, both Pete and Ivan had already created the most effortless and rewarding amalgamation of design and music, since the launch of Q36.”
The Rentals features Matt Sharp, Nick Zinner (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Ronnie Vannucci (The Killers), Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, MGMT), The Gentle Assassins Choir, and Los Angeles-based string ensemble The Section Quartet.
For more information on The Rentals, visit therentals.com.
