I remember the news of Jay Reatard’s death appearing on the NME website in January 2010 and thinking, “That sucks,” and moving on to another thing. I was 14 at the time, cut me a bit of slack. What else do you do when someone that you don’t know dies? You know that he was important to many other people, so that’s always a downer. I just never listened to his music to feel very strongly about it. After that I still didn’t think to find out more about Reatard. Had too much school stuff going on. Years passed and it was suddenly late 2015, I was working at Songlines magazine, and his track ‘Oh It’s Such a Shame’ appeared in my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. Then I realised I might have missed out on something.

Things led to another and there I was listening to Blood Visions. A thing to note about this album is that it is loud. ‘Death Is Forming’ will start playing on my phone when I’m listening on shuffle and it will make me jump from how loud that first crash cymbal is. Damn good song though. But we’re not hear to talk about that. It’s ‘My Shadow’ time. That track is the longest one on the album, only at three minutes and 18 seconds, but still has that furious, fast and powerful approach that’s consistent throughout.

One interpretation I read about this track is that it’s from the POV of a narrator afraid of their own shadow. Another stated that it was part of a whole story that runs through the album, detailing a murderer who has become obsessed with this girl who he’s determined to make his next victim. While those may or may not be true, I’m mainly focusing on those guitars and Reatard’s vocals too. He’s got that faux-British vocal thing going on that some American punk rock singers tend to use, and he’s kinda got this melodic wailing thing going throughout the verses that then change to some howling screams in the choruses. It’s good stuff.