JAY REATARD - WATCH ME FALL (Matador)

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There are four CDs bearing the Jay Reatard name that are sitting in your local indie record shop right now. Watch Me Fall is the most recent, yet only the second actual studio album, as the two albums released since 2006's Blood Visions were both collections of previously and limited released singles. In fact, Blood Visions actually had four songs that Reatard's Internet fanbase had already been familiar with for years, making Watch Me Fall the first of the four full length albums to offer us something completely new.

Actually, I take that back. One track on Watch Me Fall ("Hang Them All") was released as part of a Record Store Day 2009 exclusive split 7" with Sonic Youth, while another ("I'm Watching You") originally appeared as a bonus track on the Matador Singles '08 compilation, but never actually released as a single.

All of this may sound confusing to anyone who is reading this, but there is a point to the whole rant; Jay Reatard has a high capacity of audio output. Although the packaging and re-packaging may be something of a concern when you consider Reatard's long anti-establishment stance, the fact remains that the punk prodigy can write, record, and release quality material at a record pace. What the various record labels do with that material may not be Jay's main concern at the moment. Compile all his limited released singles along with his contributions under the names Lost Sounds, Reatards, Nervous Patterns, Terror Visions, etc. and Jay's discography could fill up two box sets. That's amazing when you consider he is only six months shy of his 30th birthday.

So what do you expect from someone on their new record who, since 1998, has been involved in dozens of bands (primary and side projects) and toyed with several styles (garage, punk, new wave, power pop, experimental ambient darkwave)? The answer includes some surprises and some reflections from the past.

Although an obvious absence of synthesizers, I can hear traces of Lost Sounds on a few tracks, especially the death-rock cut "Nothing Now" and during the opening guitar riff on "Can't Do It Anymore". Meanwhile "Faking It" and "Rotten Mind" revisit the days of Blood Visions, which was an album filled with Adverts-inspired pop-punk that swayed between moods of frantic and quirky. It's only fair to alert that the numerous singles released since Blood Visions were not stand alone experiments, as songs like the opener/first single "Ain't Gonna Save Me" and  "Wounded" showcase Reatard's newfound ability to write curiously bittersweet indie-pop that is sure to make the offices of both Matador and Pitchfork smile. However Jay offers everyone an equal ground with "Before I was Caught", a melodic two minute blast  that sounds like what would happen if The Cure and The Clash had become the same band in 1977.

The big surprise on Watch Me Fall is the album's closer "There Is No Sun", a melancholy neo-psychedelic number that sounds like it has plenty of sun (and sky and moon). If the way this album ends is a preview to the next chapter of Jay Reatard's legacy, than I will definitely be there to flip the pages.


Clicking >>HERE<< will give you a pop-up player where you can hear samples from Watch Me Fall

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