Music
by Matt Sullivan
Jay Reatard, Playing Wednesday, 30th at Mercy Lounge
Though Sun Records and Elvis are synonymous with Memphis, the city has also long garnered the distinction within the rock ’n’ roll underground as a garage rock hotbed. Memphis’ annual Goner Fest has showcased some of the best down ’n’ dirty rock bands from around the world and grown exponentially in its four-year existence. Right in the middle of it all has been Jay Lindsey, a.k.a. Jay Reatard. As a teenager, Lindsey snarled, sliced and banged songs onto his four-track recorder, releasing them under the name The Reatards. He eventually recruited a rhythm section for his first band, though the sloppy punk aesthetic remained intact. The stage name stuck, and The Reatards catapulted a frantic music career whose sound has never strayed far from its Memphis garage.
“The Monkees were the first band I really ever got into,” Reatard says by phone from Denver, where he was on tour with The Black Keys. “From there The Ramones—just basic shit. The Wipers is when I understood that you could make melodic punk rock without sounding like pop-punk,” explains Reatard. That understanding has informed most of Reatard’s wildly prolific output, with past bands like the quirky and spastic Final Solutions, artsy new wavers The Lost Sounds, countless side projects or his most recent forays as a solo artist.
Jay Reatard
His 2006 solo album Blood Visions perfectly illustrates that punk rock doesn’t have to sacrifice grit and danger for melody and hooks. Fresh on the success of Blood Visions, the hyper-productive Reatard signed with Matador for a series of 7-inch singles, the first of which was released earlier this month. The second in the series will be a split with Atlanta buzz band Deerhunter, featuring their cover of Reatard’s “Oh It’s Such a Shame.” All this solo activity, including an opening slot for The Black Keys, has effectively nixed all side project commitments, transforming Reatard into a one-band man.
Playing everywhere from a sidewalk in Philadelphia to the seventh story of a haunted house in Switzerland, Reatard has always kept a hefty touring regiment, but this year you’re even more likely to find him everywhere.
“From February to June, I don’t think we’ll go home,” says Reatard. That’s including the Black Keys tour, which is pulling the band out of the dive bars and transplanting them into venues housing thousands of people. “It reminds me of when I first started playing punk shows and everybody hated what I was doing, but instead of 30 people who want you to shut up, it’s more like 3,000,” he quips.
But The Black Keys aren’t that far removed from more humble beginnings themselves. “I was completely blown away,” says Reatard in regard to the success of his then tourmates. “Six or seven years ago they were opening up for a band I was in at some tiny bar.”
In fact, the Keys’ success parallels his own rise in popularity. “I think it’s got to be a slow thing,” he says. “If not, I just don’t know how much stability is involved in it. I think the faster that things happen, the faster they can fall apart too.”
As fresh and surprising as Blood Visions might sound, tracing the album’s strengths alongside the influences in Reatard’s previous work isn’t difficult. His staccato, Mark Mothersbaugh-like delivery on album opener “Waiting for Something” clashes with a wall of synthesizers and revisits Devo’s influence over The Lost Sounds. The just-under-a-minute-long “Greed, Money, Useless Children” recalls the brevity and aggression of his earliest songs with The Reatards. Blood Visions isn’t necessarily the culmination of a career, but rather the sound of punk reaching maturity—or at least as mature as one can get with a last name like Reatard.
|
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
|
|
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
|