Crib Notes

Who are you?
I am Digital Leather [Shawn Foree]. Past girl, part Muppet on a death trip. Manipulator of vintage synths.

Describe yourself in three words.
Telepathic, great and slutty

Who — dead or alive — would you most like to meet?
I’d like to meet a nice young lady who loves me for me and doesn’t aim to change me, or me her.

Who would you most like to slap in the face?
I’d like to slap Karen O. She’s been ripping off my music lately.

What song do you wish you had written?
I wish I wrote that credit report song so I could puke on it and burn it, banishing it forever from existence.

Elvis Costello or Elvis Presley?
In a fist fight… Presley.

LP, CD or MP3?
Cassttes. They’re super gay and they taste like chicken.

If you could start one trend, what would it be?
I’d like to see assless chaps go mainstream.

If you could end one trend, what would it be?
France.

With whom would you most like to play a game of spin the bottle?
We play spin the bottle with each other all the time. Some people think it’s gay, but it’s just dudes partying.

“Photo Lie” mp3

Digital Leather plays 529 with Thee Crucials and the F’n Heartbreaks. $7. 9 p.m. Wed., Sept. 30. 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769.

(Photo by Dale Heise)

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Jay Reatard’s second proper album is a refined pop offering that oozes with three-chord depression and loathing. But whereas Blood Visions and his subsequent singles compilations were driven by scratchy, wide-eyed tantrums, “I’m Watching You” and “There Is No Sun” slow the formula down to a less-than-spastic pace. “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me” and “Hang Them All” are pedal-to-the-metal rockers, but their clean melodies and bright production are a jarring upgrade. It used to be the balance of noise and ramped-up melodies that made Reatard’s songs so addictive. With the noise factor greatly reduced, and the presence of a mandolin and cello throughout the album, it’s his ability to do a lot with minimal arrangements that strengthens the album. Some spontaneity is lost in this taming of the shrewd, but as an evolved next step, Watch Me Fall is a sophisticated offering. (Matador) 4 stars out of 5

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TRAILER: Waiting For Something, a Jay Reatard documentary

This coming Tues., Aug. 4, MySpace will debut Waiting For Something, a short documentary film about Jay Reatard, directed by Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz.

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Chad Radford:  Your 7-inch came out a few months back. Now that you’ve had some time to ruminate, what are your thoughts on your first release after Carbonas?
Greg King:  We just laid down a bunch of new songs and they are a whole lot better.

Are you playing with the same line-up you had with the first single?
I sang and played all of the drums and the guitars and Chris Van Etten played the bass. [Gentleman] Jesse hasn’t been playing with me since we did the recording. Clay Kilbourne has been playing guitar and Mike Beavers from Predator has been playing drums.

Are you going to put out a G.G. King full-length?
Oh I don’t know. I’ve recorded six songs and they’re demo quality. It’s pretty raw and it might make a better 7-inch. I think a whole album would get kind of tiresome. I’ll probably do it with Douchemaster, but I want to send it around to a few other places to see if anyone is interested, and to see who’s going to give me a massive budget to go and record.

Are you going to stick with the name G. G. King?
I really wish that I hadn’t picked that name, but I already got a record with that name on it, so I’ll stick with it. As soon as we started getting the record covers printed I started getting all of these great ideas for names, and thought crap. It’s totally retarded. But it does kind of plays into my obsession with when cool bands and musicians shit the bed and do something terrible… And it’s an obvious reference to Dee Dee King from the Ramones doing his solo rap stuff which is pretty much unbearable.

G. G. King plays tonight, Sat., April 11 with Jay Reatard and the Stolen Hearts at Lenny’s 9 p.m. $10. 486 Decatur St. 404-577-7721.

(more…)

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“See Saw” mp3

“Always Wanting More” mp3

Jay Reatard plays a free show at Emory Performing Arts Studio, 1804 N. Decatur Rd. 8 p.m. Fri., April 10. On Sat., April 11 Jay Reatard plays at Lenny’s with Gentleman Jesse, GG King and the Stolen Hearts. 9 p.m. $10. 486 Decatur St. 404-577-7721.

Chad Radford: Your MySpace headline says “New record almost finished.” Do you have a name for it yet?
Jay Reatard: Yeah, it’s Watch Me Fall. Pretty positive title … unless I change my mind in the next three days, that’s what it’s going to be called.

Is the line-up on the record the same one that you’ve been working with for a while?
Yeah, on the recording itself the majority of the songs are just acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass and drums. And then on a few other songs there is Farfisa and a little bit of piano and on two other songs there’s some cello and a couple mandolin parts. I’m not really going into like R.E.M. and “Losing My Religion” territory just yet, but I wanted to use some different kind of non typical rock instruments in the context of a rock song.

Is it going to be in the same kind of tone as Blood Visions?
No, it’s a drastically different record. On the surface it might appear really different. The content of the songs and the general aesthetics of the songs are the same, but the way that they are delivered is different. The songs are a lot longer, there are only 12 songs and I didn’t even know it until I threw it on the computer to start sequencing it and I was like ‘wow man, there are quite a few songs on here that are like four minutes long,’ which is twice the length of most of my songs, but there are still a lot of songs on there that are really short. I’d like to say that in theory it’s a punk record but it’s really not. It’s kind of like a dark pop record I think.

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The second annual Record Store Day is gearing up to take place this year on April 19th, and is looking to be bigger and better than last year, flailing economy be damned.

Like last year one can expect a plethora of cool, limited edition vinyl records to surface for this day in honor of the mom and pop record shops around the country. This week Matador unveiled the first glimpse of what it has in store this year.

In honor the 2nd annual Record Store Day, we’ll be releasing the following limited edition vinyl titles, only available at independent retailers taking part in RSD.

OLE-864-7   Jay Reatard “Hang Them All” 7″ b/w  Sonic Youth – “No Garage”
OLE-865-7    Sonic Youth – “Pay No Mind” (Beck cover)  b/w  Beck – “Green Light”  (Sonic Youth cover) 7?
OLE-855-1    Pavement    Live In Germany    LP

We’re making 2500 each of the above. After they’re gone, as  the Bard Of Hookset, NH [G.G. Allin] might’ve said (if he collected records), tough fuckin’ shit.

Apparently Matador didn’t get enough hate mail from all of the disgruntled record buyers who were cut out of the ridiculously limited Jay Reatard 7-inches with which the label taunted the world earlier this year. Granted there are 2500 of each of these records, so your odds are a little better this time around, but the hype machine is already churning.

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Two shows over the weekend delved into equal but opposite ends of the outer reaches of vivid, noisy and arty psychedelic rock, yielding vastly different and equally distinctive sounds.

On Halloween night I hid out in the balcony during the Deerhunter record release party for their third album, Microcastle. Times New Viking opened with a crackly, noise-afflicted pop dirge of brain-teasing hooks swimming in ugly but beautiful overdrive. Jay Reatard followed with a face full of hair-thrashing, shot-gun punk energy, playing a little longer than his typical 20-minute set, but not by too much.

From a smaller stage it’s much easier to get swept into the moment of sheer, cathartic punk rock release during Jay’s shows. But from the safety of my perch in the balcony high above Variety’s stage, Jay’s typically sped-up tirades did the songs a bit of a disservice. He peeled through dozens of songs, spanning his “solo” singles pre-Blood Visions all the way through his recent spate of Matador 7-inches, but he just couldn’t get through them fast enough. Songs like “Hammer I Miss You,” “My Shadow” and “Screaming Hand” were played so fast that the delivery felt cartoonish… Intense to be sure, but they could definitely benefit from a dose of Xanax.

Afterward, it took Pylon a minute to reach cruising altitude with opening song “Cool,” but they hit stride soon enough. The sparseness and dub-like tension in their pop/new wave pop arrangements gives the group both strength and a timeless sense of intrigue, which was made all the more intense following Jay Reatard’s spastic energy. or whatever that’s worth, a few youngsters within my earshot grumbled that Pylon went on for too long… but the rest of the steadily building crowd seemed no worse for the wear.

Deerhunter closed with a performance that empowered songs from Microcastle with a much greater punch than anything the record offers. “Cover Me (Slowly),” “Never Stops” and “Nothing Ever Happened” unfolded behind a stunning barrage of lights as each song transformed from elegant order into chaos; culminating in a massive, all-consuming drone. When the audience demanded more, the group obliged with a menacing “Lake Somerset” stomp that bled into a few other more recent songs before segueing back into the drone and putting a cap on a weird and sensory overloading Halloween night.

The following night I made my way over to The Earl to catch “an evening with the Legendary Pink Dots.” I always forget about the gothic appeal this group holds, until I’m confronted with their audiences… That and when the door guy asked, “what’s up with all the goths here tonight?”

It’s nothing more than a coincidence as far as I’m concerned; a byproduct of the Pink Dots pairings with the members of Skinny Puppy for the Tear Garden albums… That and Edward Ka-Spel does posses a certain dark and mystical quality that doesn’t fit easily anywhere else. But I still maintain that throwing around words like psychedelic, avant-garde, post-industrial folk, experimental and just plain weird are more fitting of the group’s sound and vision. It’s an age old dilemma that has followed the group since their inception in 1980, and it’s not a bad thing.

(more…)

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Pitchfork Media has posted a three-part video segment of Daytripping hosted by Bradford Cox of Deerhutner.

Throughout his Daytrip to the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago Bradford talks to Health, Jay Reatard, King Khan, Apples in Stereo, High Places and many more.

Click here to watch part 1.

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The fourth single in Matador’s series of limited-editions by Jay Reatard is a split 7-inch with Atlanta’s Deerhunter. The A-side is Jay covering Deerhunter’s “Flourescent Grey,” and the B-side is Deerhunter covering Jay’s “Oh, It’s Such A Shame.”

The record will be in stores on July 22. Matador’s webstore preorder date and time will be Mon., July 14 at 3:00 p.m. EDT. (Bastille Day).

All six 7-inches in the series will be compiled on an LP/CD to be released this fall.

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Rob’s House Records is releasing two new 7-inches on Tuesday, July 1.
First up is the “San Francisco” b/w “Ponytail” single from Jack Of Heart. “Departing completely from the static-soaked, overdriven throb prerogative of their previous bands, Jack Of Heart is a new conglomeration of Piero from the Fatals and Demon’s Claws, and Benji from the Creteens. Their sound takes off down the tender side of the switchblade, and erupts with such an unassuming immediacy that it’s tough to pinpoint the first time it slithers through your head. With a decidedly less noisy sentiment in place, Jack Of Heart combine echoed and chilling guitars that form those little icy patches that cause you to slip, and fall in love.”

—Todd Killings, Victim of time.

The second record being released on the first is the “Man In The Woods” b/w “Foxhole Madness” single from Lover! “Rich Crook has already blazed a frightfully righteous pop pathway with Lover!, showcasing the hidden songwriting talents he kept to himself with such notable bands as the Reatards, Lost Sounds, and Viva L’American Death Ray. Once his songs reached the surface in The Knaughty Knights, it was apparent that Crook needed his own vehicle to spread his pop sense to the outer limits of the rock’n roll underworld.”

— Todd Killings, Victim of Time.

Both Records are being pressed in a limited edition of 500 copies on black vinyl and can be pre-ordered by clicking here.

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Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chad Radford and WMLB-AM’s Max Arbes chatting about Destroyer, Jay Reatard and Earth — all playing in Atlanta this week.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

Download

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Good punk rock is hard to come by these days. Sure, there is no shortage of sloppy twentysomethings decked out in ankle-tight jeans and studded belts, going through the motions of three chords and a rage of ramped-up emotions. But in the year 2007, the uniform and the sound are as predictable as reggae music. This is precisely what made Jay Reatard’s show at Lenny’s on Mon., Oct. 15, rise so far above the trappings of pedestrian punk showmanship. The secret: good songwriting and a no-bullshit stage presence that’s followed through by the sheer force of a freight train.

Jay covers all of the bases with his approach, and the element of surprise is not to be underestimated. The sound guy barely had time to fade the house music out before Reatard and his freshly assembled crew of hirsute players flipped the switch and became locked in the throes of cathartic, head-banging fury.

The show started seemingly without warning. One minute the band was lounging on stage, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be, plugged in and working properly. The next minute, puffy Caucasian Afros were shaking violently.

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