May 27, 2009

New Jay Reatard - "It Ain't Gonna Save Me"

On the heels of relaunching his label Shattered Records, cleaning out his pre-Jay Reatard singles closet, and packaging his being into a collector's club, the singles-slinger has announced his new full-length on Matador and with it a primer track called "It Ain't Gonna Save Me." It's Jay's first LP since Blood Visions got the vet reaching more ears in '06, and his first made with a label agreement already in place. As such, he's sorta tripping out on the process. Read into the album title (Watch Me Fall) if you want. He shared some thoughts with Andrew Earles (via Matablog):

This new album has been challenging. It's the first time I've written and recorded an album specifically because a label wants to release it. I've never made a record for a record label. I've always finished my recordings and then a label is decided on. When I made Blood Visions I had no idea that it was going to see the light of day. And I've never made a record in which the label heard the songs, or anyone heard the songs, before the album was finished, so that's kind of intense. That's what singles are for; I always considered my singles as a glimpse between the albums. Labels always had the previous single as an example of where I was going at the time, or of what the next album might sound like. In this situation, people at the label are hearing the songs before the album has been finished, but I try not to let it distract me, I'm trying to go about this process in a way that's the closest to how I would have done an album in the past. A lot of bands these days, they approach the making of an album like it's collecting songs, they don't think about how all of the songs are going to work together. They sequence their albums on iTunes, wondering what songs sound best next to each other rather than putting them together as they were written. That's not an album.

After all that, you'd imagine Jay would rather you wait to hear the whole record front to back rather than piecemeal promo style, but this is the piecemeal promo era. Matador has kindly released the lead track "It Ain't Gonna Save Me" to stoke fires, a typically quick-hitting Reatard jam cutting equal parts melody, bop, pop, and snot into 2:21.

Jay Reatard - "It Ain't Gonna Save Me" (MP3)

Watch Me Fall is out 8/18 via Matador. You'll be hearing more from it at these tour dates:

05/28 - Barcelona, Spain (Primavera Festival)
06/11 - San Diego, CA @ Casbah
06/12 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
06/13 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
06/15 - Seattle, WA @ Crocodile Cafe
06/16 - Vancouver @ Biltmore
06/17 - Portland, OR @ Dante's
06/19 - Long Beach, CA @ Alex's Bar
06/26 - Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
06/27 - Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick
06/28 - Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
06/29 - Toronto @ Mod Club
06/30 - Montreal @ La Sala Rossa
07/01 - New York, NY @ Stuyvesant Oval - FREE
07/02 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
07/03 - Allston, MA @ Harper's Ferry
07/05 - Washington DC @ Black Cat
07/07 - Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel
07/08 - Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light with TV Smith of the Adverts
07/09 - Nashville, TN @ The End with TV Smith of the Adverts
07/10 - Memphis, TN @ Hi-Tone Café with TV Smith of the Adverts
07/11 - Oxford, MS @ Proud Larry's