Can't Believe You Still Put Up With This Shit

Jay Reatard - Always Wanting More.

This is the sound of a motorcycle kickstart. It's the sound of five guys pushing a van down the hill to the nearest gas station. It's a bunch of punks on drugs in bumper cars, careening into each other's smelly faces. The cliche is disaffected suburban youth smashing some shit while blasting cheap trick at full volume, chuck taylors and jeans a must. The reality is a bunch of disaffected urban youth at the smell eating candy bars and staying out past curfew. They both work.

Listen, if you're not hip to this whole Jay Reatard thing yet, I don't know what to tell you. I saw him four times last year because his show is fucking kick ass. He'll run through 15 songs in 20 minutes. He packs that shit with the relentless intensity of a good old fashioned punk rock show, dripping in intricate melodies and on the cusp of mayhem. It's basically the last twenty years of rock shows boiled into one perfect set.

And the song here? It's got the anthemic sweep and spirit with a bratty put-down chorus and a guitar line that threatens to be too fast for his fingers. It's built on tambourine jangle and an oddly melodic strum in the background. Then the glam hits and we're off the races.

So you've heard that Matador is putting out his singles one at a time this year, eventually compiling them onto one superdisc at the end. How does it sound? Who knows... he's not done with them yet. But what I've heard is exactly what you want to hear. This track is from the third single (the first one hasn't been released yet) and was found on Matadors online sampler, which was awfully nice of them. In the future, you'll be able to grab the 7"s direct from Matador or increasingly obscure stores in smaller and smaller numbers. Say what you want about it, but at least it's a plan.