Jay Reatard - Watch Me Fall

Despite spending his teens in lo-fi garage-punk bands, Jay Reatard’s solo work is unashamedly pop. There are no attempts to undermine the hooks running through Watch Me Fall with noisy outbursts: Reatard instead offers up twelve no-nonsense, instantly memorable slices of power-pop which shimmy, shake, rattle and roll through a hit-parade of influences. Past comparisons to Guided By Voices and Supergrass don’t quite convey the enthusiastic brio with which Watch Me Fall crackles - imagine instead if Andrew W.K. chose to emulate Ash and Weezer rather than soft-metal and motivational speakers. So why the subdued score? Because, for all their individual charms, over the course of several listens many songs lose their sheen; chord changes start to sound overly obvious and there’s only so many way/away-type rhymes one can take before craving something a little more ambitious than a three-minute earworm. In moderation, however, Reatard is a happy, catchy treat.