Jay Reatard obviously set out to provoke when he picked his name, but I’m starting to think he may be one of those movie-character clichés - the spiky angry dude who’s just trying to cover up his inner nice-guy. The album title Singles 06-07 is a little more straightforward; I think you can work that one out for yourselves.
So, who is Jay Reatard? I’ve known his name for some time now, muttered by tastemakers and casually dropped by comment-thread hipsters in the venues where the next big thing is decided upon. The next big thing would appear to be that noisy garage-shoegaze-pop amalgam, and Reatard is usually mentioned as one of its more prolific and impressive proponents.
Prolific is about right. Despite covering only two years, Singles 06-07 has seventeen tracks. Yes, seventeen, all remastered versions of Reatard’s short-run vinyl-only output under his own name. Granted, only one clocks in over the three-minute mark (and even then it’s a close call), but even so - that’s more material than some big-name artists manage to squeeze out in in a similar period.
Maybe we could achieve Jay Reatard of cutting corners? After all, it’d be easy to record seventeen singles in a year if you sacked the guys in quality control, right? Hell, then you could probably record them in an afternoon and spend the rest of the year, I dunno, skiing or something. The casual listener might reach that conclusion quite easily; the recordings collected on Singles 06-07 are rough, scratchy, overloaded, lo-fi. ProTools, this ain’t.
The immediate impression is one of sketchiness - a sense that perhaps Reatard has to avoid production frills so he can work fast enough to get the ideas out of his head rightfuckingnow before he gets bounced to something new by a form of musical ADHD. But take a second listen through, and it becomes apparent that the surface is only half the story, and Jay Reatard’s songs are a lot more crafted than he may want you to think.
It’s a good disguise, though; harsh overfuzzed guitars and cheesy Farfisa organs join rattling (but rock solid) drumming and Reatard’s broken-mic vocals that bring to mind the “yeah-I’m-dumb-so-what” attitude of the early Beastie Boys material. But I find myself reminded of Bowie - not just because of Reatard’s voice itself, but because both musicians share the knack of appearing to be very stupid when they are actually being very clever indeed.
And Reatard’s singles are smart savvy pop, subverting a variety of formulas beneath the garage simplicity and a certain cartoonish abandon. Listen to the sixties radio bubblegum of “Don’t Let Him Come Back”, with everything in its place, with no part too short or too long; hear “All Wasted” out-Ramone the Ramones with a throwaway hook and a chorus about zombies; check out the ‘77 protopunk of “Blood Visions”, or the New Wave clatter of “Let It All Go”, or, or, or…
In isolation, you could imagine each track being a happy accident by an average band who play for the love of the noise. But Jay Reatard is unusually consistent, as Singles 06-07 demonstrates very effectively - not consistent in sound or style, but in his ability to make a song sound throwaway and dumb, but have the thing stick in your head for the rest of the day. In fact, I suspect he puts a lot more work and polish into these tracks than he might want us to believe - but that’s OK. I’m happy to keep quiet if he’s happy to keep making the tunes.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: garage, Jay Reatard, noise, pop, punk, Singles 06-07
