Jay Reatard
Painted Shut b/w An Ugly Death
Matador Records
2008

****

By: Rinjo Njori

In the mid 80s, The Cure broke out with the bungee cord video for "In Between Days." More than twenty years later, they are releasing the first four singles of their record on vinyl. Oddly enough, Jay Reatard takes a similar path for his second proper solo album. Over the next few months Jay Reatard will release his album as 7-inch singles, followed by a "proper" physical CD when the single series comes to an end. The second single in the series perhaps is the best indication of where Reatard plans to go with this album. Drastically different than Blood Visions? No. Clearly though, the obvious punk influences on Reatard's music are moving into a Post-Punk phase.

"Painted Shut" oddly compares to "In Between Days." Instead of "In Between Days" employing jangly guitar on top of piano, Reatard chooses acoustic guitar over jangly guitar. Like his first solo album and the first two songs in the single series, Reatard layers his songs with 80s post-goth/ new wave/ proto-alternative/ punk stylings. "See Saw" attempted the same thing on the first single but its resemblance to IMA Robot's "Creeps Me Out" clouded the bigger picture. With so many ingredients, so many things could go wrong. Instead, "Painted Shut" chugs along at a quick fire pace and ties together what can be assumed will be the sound of the album in the next couple of singles. On "An Ugly Death," which backs this song, Reatard tones and slows things down. Except for a lone guitar solo half way through the song, it could easily be deconstructed slightly to resemble something that wouldn't be out of place in Joy Division's 1979. These elements are fleshed out mostly in the keyboards but Reatard's vocals lack the reckless abandon that usually pushes along each song. It's less Fred Schneider and more Stan Ridgeway.

The only element of Reatard's singles experiment is that the casual fan will not obsess about the next single. You can only assume that some, if not all of the singles, are already recorded. Yet, Matador Records doesn't have a definitive release schedule. They are available digitally, but even in the renewed and reinvigorated singles environment a certain amount of fandom is required to pull off this experiment and keep up to date with when the next release is coming. In between releases, we can only obsess.

Labels: Jay Reatard