I bought a Reatards 7” probably around 11 years ago now. Jay Reatard was an angry teenager then, releasing frenetic records which sound like they were recorded on boomboxes. I always assumed that he, like me, had been inspired by his hometown heroes The Oblivians to just go ahead and make music—ability to play instruments be damned. Unlike me, he had heavily imbibed the punk ethos at an earlier and more appropriate age. And unlike me, he kept at it.

His 2006 breakthrough record, Blood Visions, is unmistakably the product of the Reatard I was familiar with from years ago. But it’s something more. Something desperate and sad, not just angsty and frenetic. I’m downloading his much-lauded followup, Watch Me Fall, as I write this.

His passing has struck me beyond expectation. RIP Jay Reatard.

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