No girls, no Moogs. So went Matt Sharp’s nightly declaration this past year as he humbly shuffled his way from one town to the next, performing songs from an album that didn’t have a chance at the same success he found with Weezer and the Rentals. The world had turned and left him here: playing dive bars, slumming it in a van, recording on a four-track. If this sounds like the sort of return to Earth reserved for those past their prime, Sharp hasn’t done much to protect himself. The vocals on his debut album are as flat as the Tennessee gravel landscapes where he recorded them, and Sharp’s chops are obviously shaded by the greats he loaded on the iPod before leaving: Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Mark Hollis (when Talk Talk was at its heady best). By all means, Matt Sharp should be dismissed after your first listen. But there’s genuine hurt beneath all of this, and whenever Sharp finds himself in songs with both arch and ache (as he does on sad-eyed piano ballad “Before You Go”), he bravely steps forward as a man with nothing left to lose.

MAGNET found Sharp at a coffee shop near his home in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles, where he talked of his unknown future and often celebrated past.

Do you think you’ll ever be able to make a record like this again?
I don’t know. I really do believe in the influence of your surroundings. The influence New York had on (Weezer’s) the Blue Album and the influence London had on (the Rentals’) Seven More Minutes was even more with Tennessee and the impact it had on this record. It was a place to take shelter. It was really comforting to be there and lose yourself for a while and just figure out how to be a better person.

You’ve recently begun writing music again with Rivers Cuomo. Did you ever think there would come a time when you could forgive him?
Those emotions with Weezer are very complex. They’re so hard to explain that no matter what I say, I will do them injustice. I think what happened is that I hadn’t even thought about the outside world over the past few years, and I couldn’t think about what had gone on in the past. In there somewhere, I probably just let go.

But surely this wasn’t easy. The last time you saw him was in a courtroom.
He’s reached out to me quite a few times since then. It just seemed to make sense now. There’s something between us that I don’t think he or I can find on our own. It would be ignorant of me to ignore that. If you can find that by just getting together with somebody and writing some songs, that seems ... I don’t know. It makes me feel pretty fortunate.

After being apart for close to eight years, what feels different and what feels the same?
The one thing that’s apparent with Rivers that I’ve never experienced with anyone else is that you really get a sense that he has an unlimited potential as a songwriter. That’s not supposed to be a touchy-feely, ass-kissing moment. I always felt that if his potential was fully realized, he would be considered in the upper echelon of melody-based songwriters, with people like Brian Wilson or Paul McCartney. To sit down with somebody and feel that possibility can either make you want to completely give up writing music or challenge you to find your own voice. When I started writing songs, he was probably the main person I tried to emulate. I don’t know if it’s just going out to Tennessee, but since then, I’ve found the comfort of my voice. When Rivers and I sit down now, the desire to emulate him isn’t there. I feel really relaxed with who I am.

Do you have any idea what will come of this?
We haven’t put any label on it. The main thing that came out of the first couple times we played was that we realized it made more sense, creatively, for us to be together than not to be. No matter what form that takes. Whatever it becomes, it becomes.