Watch Me Fall

Jay Reatard opens his second full-length, WATCH ME FALL, with a classic bit of Buzzcocks-style frantic, sexually pent-up punk pop. The record continues on the same pepped-up, neurotic pace, supremely self-flagellating, deliriously confused, reverent, often nostalgic, yet, oddly, wholly of its time; essentially everything that made Reatard one of the more exciting indie artists of the late-'00s. And that's not to say the record is anywhere near one-note: WATCH ME FALL veers from classic `70s punk to jagged-deconstructionist Devo-esque concoctions to Brit pop of more recent vintage to post-rock guitar fuzz.