Jay Reatard - The Matador Singles '08
Jay Reatard, although still only 28, could already be said to be something of a veteran musician. Progressing from home-recorded tapes made at aged 15 to playing with and fronting The Reatards and Lost Sounds, he has now been an enthusiastic proponent of a kind of “get on with it” D.I.Y. lo-fi for many years. This year alone he has already previously put out a 17-track collection of his singles from 2006 and 2007, now returns a mere 3 months later with this release of all of this year’s songs (so far?). So clearly, this is an artist for whom the word “prolific” could be termed an understatement, but is the rapid rate of his creativity having a detrimental effect on quality of output?
Well, the first thing to point out is that we are not dealing, here, with elaborately orchestrated mini-symphonies. Reatard’s stock in trade is a kind of gonzo yet often bleakly nihilistic garage rock party music, which lends itself well to a kind of knock-em-out-and-on-to-the-next-one approach. Occasionally, the tracks are just so basic and stripped down that their structure, sound and lyrics are too obvious (“Always wanting more / always wanting more / it’s such a useless bore / but you’re always wanting more”, goes ‘Always Wanting More’, predictably), but for the most part this is good knockabout fun: guitars, drawled or declaimed vocals, the occasional use of an old-style organ to pep things up a bit, that kind of thing.
What keeps things interesting is the dark, usually negative and sometimes really quite grotesque subject matter. ‘Screaming Hand’, ‘An Ugly Death’, ‘Dead On Arrival’ all reflect this skewed pessimism, and the ‘Fluorescent Grey’ that Reatard is singing about in the track of that name is the colour that he imagines the decaying body of his erstwhile high-school hero (and crush?) turning after death. This is perhaps the single that stands out most in this collection, a schizoid psychodrama that varies in pace and tone several times in the one track. It is also the longest track (although still well under five minutes, so not quite prog rock!), most clock in at between one and three minutes.
So, whilst not the most sophisticated or spiritually enriching music you will probably listen to this year, Reatard’s singles probably will number amongst the most down-and-dirty, urgent and lively. As such, they mostly transcend the negativity of their themes and lyrics and actually leave you with a rather positive, lingering aftershock.