21st Century Slacker Punk Man

For those of a certain age, the late ”80s and early ”90s were a weird limbo where the John Hughes film stereotypes within began to grow up and feel largely disjointed from the world at large. Artistic manifestations emanated out of the lassitude, the best examples being the music of Pavement and the film Slacker. Though two decades separate now from then, Jay Reatard’s Watch Me Fall seems imbued with that not-quite-ready-to-grow-up spirit without anxiety that’s packaged with it.

Slacker Generation-isms aside, Watch Me Fall moves pretty fast with 12 tracks barely clocking 32 minutes, each one steeped in Reatard’s perception of the garage-punk style. “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me” starts things off with all guns blazing in hyper-glam fashion—a pulsing bass, charging drums and the most poppy guitar riff of the set. An anthem of preferring antisocial activity, it precedes its choruses accordingly, claiming, “In this bedroom is where I sit / ‘Cause I don’t really give a shit.”

With this opener, the tone is set for an album of songs about staying in the bedroom, shutting the world and responsibility out, and being unapologetic for doing so. Highlights in this oeuvre include “Before I Was Caught,” “My Reality” and “Can’t Do It Anymore.”

The stunner here is that every cut of Watch Me Fall is just as energetic and magnetic as the last and almost all blow by at the speed of light. Like 2006’s Blood Visions, Jay Reatard has put out a complete, consistent package that is worthy of praise and that demonstrates his ability to put together an album