The Barbaras...finally, a record

I've got a little review of the Barbaras one-and-only album, a piece of work that very nearly never got released.

The review's up at Blurt.

BARBARAS
The Barbaras 2006-2008
(Goner)


The Barbaras, out of Memphis, made goofy, rough-edged, addictively tuneful garage pop. They performed with props and costumes, putting on elaborate shows for scanty punk crowds. A fixture in the Memphis scene of the late aughts, their recorded output was, up until now, a 7" single put out by Goner in 2010. The a-side, "Summertime Road," got a fair amount of blog love, its bleary good cheer nearly drowned in distortion and bottom-of-a-deep-well sonics.

The Barbaras' full-length is altogether cleaner and more pop, the group's giddy psychedelic side and penchant for melody brought out by clearer production. It was produced, as it happens, by Jay Reatard, and at about the same time that Reatard was, himself, turning towards tunefulness with Watch Me Fall.

The Barbaras album was originally slated for release on In the Red in 2010, but very nearly never got released at all. The band was closely aligned with Jay Reatard - they opened for him and two members (Stephen Pope and Billy Hayes) were in his band. Reatard was producing the album - and had the master tapes and files - when Pope and Hayes quit his band mid-tour in October 2009. Bad feelings flowed and Reatard threatened to destroy the tapes. A few months later he died, and everyone assumed that the Barbaras sessions were lost forever. But then Alicia Trout found the files on Reatard's hard drive and the project was revived.

The Barbaras have mostly moved on - three of them are in the Magic Kids, others have moved out of Memphis - but their lone full-length album makes you wish that they had continued. It's poised somewhere between the straight-up, one-two punk of bands like Tyvek and the languid pop of Real Estate. "Flow," which first appeared on the "Summertime Road" single, here expands into psychedelia, lush vocal harmonies draped over its twitchy, tetchy rhythm. "Super Ball" bounces between silly exuberance and romantic longing. Reatard was fascinated, during the last years of his life, with New Zealand lo-fi pop, and it's easy to see how that might have slipped into the Barbaras' toolbox as well. "Topsy Turvy Magic" reflects Kinks-ish musical hall through the Clean's fuzz-crusted mirror, even adding some Wilson-esque vocal flourishes on top. Yet however elaborate the arrangements can get, there's a disarming, punk-style enthusiasm behind them.

Let's not kid ourselves. If The Barbaras 2006 - 2008 had never gotten out, not much in music or life or art would have changed. But these songs go down like melted ice cream on a warm day, and you've hardly finished one when another one charms its way into view. They're fun, they're easy to love, and they're here. Isn't that enough to celebrate?

DOWNLOAD: "The Flow," "Topsy Turvy Magic" JENNIFER KELLY

Lost Lost...more posthumous Jay Reatard

Last year, Goner Records anthologized the Reatards, the late, great Jay Reatard's noisy, punky garage band. This year, they're giving the same treatment to the Lost Sounds, a goth-y, new-wave-nodding, keyboard-heavy outfit that balanced Jay's nihilistic tuneful-ness with Alicia Trout's feral girl group charisma. Lost Lost: Demos, Sounds, Alternate Takes & Unused Songs collects the Memphis bands' diverse, extremely raw catalogue, which ranges from Jay-like punk anthems ("No Count" sounds just like him, and also contains the line "I'm a reatard") and odder, jerkier, damaged Human League-ish outings like "NoOne Killer". There's some weird sound experiement stuff, a long fairly amazing psycho cut called "Total Destruction," which might turn into my favorite, I don't know.

Anyway, great band...here they are playing live


And again

Well that's it for punk rock

Jay Reatard died last night in his sleep at 29. He was, musically, probably one of the most exciting writer/performers of the 00s, a long-time vet given his early start at 16, but still young enough to promise greatness and, hell, to deliver it more often than not. You didn't have to listen to his songs for very long to notice that they were all about alienation and self-doubt, the laceration wrapped in some of the best actual songs of the last few years. No word on how it happened, but you don't die in your sleep at 29 without help...do you? What a shame.

Haven't been this sad about a rock and roll death since Joe Strummer and he had a comparatively long and happy life.

Here he is doing "Nightmare"

Have you heard the new Robyn Hitchcock?

It’s called Goodnight Oslo. I’ve been listening to it a little bit over the weekend. I’m by no means a strict proponent of skill and craft in popular music, this one is so beautifully, intelligently made that it makes you wonder about all that substandard dreck floating around in the blogosphere.

You know about Hitchcock from the Soft Boys, but you might not know that his band, the Venus 3, is made up of Scott MacCaughey, Peter Buck and Bill Rieflen…all serious musical threats on their own terms (except, perhaps, for MacCaughey, who is very good, but hardly ever serious about anything).

Here’s a video of the title track, performed at the Austin City Limits Festival this fall.


Oh, I never closed the loop on Jay Reatard, but he was very, very good – in fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone who was so completely out there. He’s also, in some way, really reserved, I don’t think you could see more than a fifth of his face the whole show because of the hair in it, and he doesn’t banter at all. But the songs were totally intense, one after another, no breaks (like the Ramones), starting with material from Blood Visions and proceeding more or less chronologically through the In the Red singles, the Matador singles and finally this year’s Watch Me Fall. He had three different guitars, which seemed to be matched to three different sets of songs, a flying wedge electric for the Blood Visions stuff, a plugged in acoustic for the Matador singles and another electric for the end. The crowd was really, really young because Who Shot Hollywood had opened (average age maybe 17?) and brought all their friends, so it was very high energy down near the stage and absolutely exhilarating. If you get a chance, go see him. This was one of the best concerts I’ve been to all year.

Oooh, new Jay Reatard!

Jay Reatard’s Blood Visions is maybe the only record I’ve heard in the last five years or so that stands a chance at all-time top ten…brilliantly sharp and short and dark and paranoid, but lightened somehow by a strangled pop sensibility and new wave keyboards. His last set of singles (the Matador set) seemed to point towards even better things, a broadening and deepening of a sound that had already knocked me flat. So now, very exciting…Matador has put up a free mp3 from Jay Reatard’s upcoming (August) full-length, Watch Me Fall.

It’s called “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me” and, I beg to disagree. It may just save us all.

While you read this blog, Jay Reatard is writing three new songs

My review of the immensely prolific Jay Reatard's second set of singles for 2008 ran today in Dusted. What do you think? Did I gush?

Now I'll have to have another look at my top-ten.

Artist: Jay Reatard
Album: Matador Singles ‘08
Label: Matador
Review date: Oct. 16, 2008

Four and a half months ago, Dusted’s Ben Donnelly called Jay Reatard’s furious spate of 2006 into 2008 releases an avalanche "similar to the 30 months that produced The Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin, or the seven LPs of music the Clash did between 1977 and 1980 and Husker Du did between 1984 and 1987." He added, "Twenty years from now, I bet it will still sound as great as those do now. There’s still nothing like the sound of an avalanche as it’s plowing you under."

Reatard was, even as Donnelly wrote this, cranking out the singles for Matador at a rate of two a month, and that was just the stuff that made vinyl. (In interviews, he says that if he goes home for a week, he will typically write 14 or more songs.) He is apparently not one of those people who sits around wondering what they should do next.

And yet, even if he’s not consciously thinking about how his work will evolve, Reatard seems to have found a new direction. In this second collection of singles for 2008, you can see him move gradually away from the distorted, garage punk blowouts of Blood Visions towards a rough sort of classic pop. You can’t listen to "See Saw" without remembering the short, sharp assaults of Reatard’s earlier solo work (that is, if you’ve heard it). You can’t hear "An Ugly Death," just three songs and a couple of months later, without thinking of Phil Spector.

Read the rest.

See-Saw

Always Wanting More

New mix

I made a mix of stuff that I’ve been listening to lately, mostly for reviews and interviews. Here’s a track listing:

Katjon Band “Red Flag” This Jon Langford and Kat from the Ex in a sort of one-off collaborion.

Wilderness “Strand the Test of Time” I'm interviewing these guys for Copper Press by email sometime soon...no idea what to ask them.

Fabulous Diamonds, “Untitled” Fantastic no waver duo from Australia, check out the detuned sax at the end.

Palms, “Monte Alban” Really hard-to-classify, trans-continental duo with a new-ish album out on Rare Book Room, which used to be mostly a studio but somehow turned into a label.

Starlite Desperation, “We Don’t Do Time” Fuck yeah, rock and roll.

Jay Reatard, “Painted Shut” See above.

Boston Spaceships, “Two Girl Area” Pollard with a pretty damn good band sounding exactly like himself...a good thing in my book.

Mogwai, “Batcat” The loud one on their new album.

All the Saints, “Fire on Corridor X” New psych-grunge-heavy band from Atlanta that got signed to Touch & Go while I wasn't looking.

XX Teens, “Round” Hmmm...already fading on this one, but I do like the drums. Anybody else thinking "Keep them Separated" by the Offspring?

Giant Sand, “Muck Machine” My fave track off proVISIONS with that loopy, bloopy bass line.

Hush Arbors, “The Light” This is one of the louder, more rock-oriented tracks off a really beautiful new freak folkish outing from Sun Burned Hand of the Man's Keith Wood.

Woven Hand, “The Beautiful Axe” My favorite Old Testament prophet/Joy Division fan, Dave Eugene Edwards...off his new album Ten Stones.

Boduf Songs, “Spirit Harness” So quiet, so devastating.

Larkin Grimm, “Ride that Cyclone” Omigod, just interviewed this woman, Michael Gira's latest find, here backed by his other new band, Fire on Fire...crazy, dark bluegrass sort of.

Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, “Back Burner” Also talked to Isobel finally, who said that the guitar lick at the end of this piece (Dave MacGowan BTW) is her very favorite sound on the excellent Sunday at Devil Dirt.

Here's the link: