Jay Reatard
Matador Singles '08

And finally, here it is, the "cazzone" album of the year!

Heading up the project is a young man from Memphis, with Elvis in his blood and all of garage punk knowledge at heart. Not a newcomer, good old Jay was already active five years ago as the leader of the (hefty) Lost Sound, creators of a very dark-hued garage sound; quite far from what Jay releases as a solo artist.

An album with irresistible appeal and an almost impossible concentration of memorable choruses and refrains. Sometimes blatantly pop, sometimes faithfully garage-punk, always above the qualitative average of many other inhabitants of today's garage universe.

Perhaps it's because this is a collection of singles (the second after that of the singles '06/'07), but it's hard to discard any track among the 13 on the album. They range annoyingly easily from punk pop à la Replacements ("Painted Shut"), to shadowy marches like the Fuzztones ("An Ugly Death"), flower punk anthems between Undertones and Count Five ("You Mean Nothing To Me" and the fantastic "Always Wanting More"). The Undertones might be a fitting comparison, not so much musically, but in terms of the silly joy and adolescent carefree spirit that a song like "Teenage Kicks" gives you. Not satisfied, the guy adds to the already juicy platter incursions into the realm of dazed hypnotism à la Devo ("Fluorescent Grey" originally by Deerhunter) and three chilling simil-ballads at the end: "No Time" has something of the acoustic Pavement, "You Were Sleeping" has a swooning quality reminiscent of the Smashing Pumpkins (?), and "I'm Watching You" bears the immediate marks of a song to dedicate to your next flame.

I doubt Jay can repeat this for long, maybe I'm wrong, and I admit to being a pessimist by nature, so hurry to fall in love with it and embed these thirteen pearls in your cortex, maybe in two months it will be too late, kind of like seasonal fruit.

P.S: Dedicated to you Trell, I didn't have time to ask if you liked it....also because I know you would have hated it! Tié!