I don't like much of what I've heard from Black Lips or Times New Viking: the whole "got ripped on Old Crow, played our guitars with broken beer bottles, and recorded it straight to cassette" aesthetic does not, on its own merits, do a whole lot for me. Memphis' Jay Reatard comes from the same DIY school, but has thoughtfully included the tunes. Punk-as-fuck in the Ramones' two-minutes-and-we're-out sense, but scuffed around the edges, Reatard's 2006 solo debut, Blood Visions, is a lost gem of nouveau garage rock. Now he's jumped up to the majors (well, at least Triple A), signing with Matador Records, with whom he plans to release a series of six 7-inch singles, with each edition in a successively smaller batch. For Reatard fans with a vinyl fetish or a collector's appetite, I'm sorry to say that you are getting a grade-A screwing. For myself, I'd say that there's nothing quite so wasteful in this age of digitization as committing all that raw material to two songs. For everyone else, I'd say fear not, as there are plans in the works to release the contents of these limited edition singles in CD format, you know, the music being the important thing and all.
For some idea how this holy terror actually sounds, you can click here.
