Jay Reatard

Better Than Something

Jonathan Toubin, Comeback Kid

Getting back to the business of making people dance

Better Than Something: Jay Reatard

Da Capo's Second-Best Music Writing 2011: 112 Of Last Year's Most Notable Music Stories

The 2011 edition of Da Capo's annual anthology Best Music Writing— which this year was guest edited by The New Yorker classical writer and The Rest Is Noise author Alex Ross; Daphne Carr has been the series editor since 2006—contains 32 essays and is augmented by a a jumbo-sized "Other N ... More >>

Q&A: Double Dagger Drummer Denny Bowen Talks New York Memories And Breaking Up Over Rock, Paper, Scissors

courtesy Thrill Jockey Double Dagger is a Baltimore trio who've been antagonizing audiences with their fourth-wall-dropping post-hardcore squalls for more than nine years. Last month, they announced they were calling it quits--rather than fade away with a whimper, the Wham City vets decided to tour ... More >>

Ty Segall

Download: Xray Eyeballs' "Crystal," A Real-Life Crystal Meth Breakup Song

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent. ​Xray Eyeballs is the sunny, garage-pop alter-ego of guitarist O.J. San Felipe (of YIMBY vets Golden Triangle), a lazy-Sunday neo-Nuggets shout-along where a chorus can totally be "Let's all get high ... More >>

Pazz & Jop Voter Comments: The Personals

People Who Died, Circa 2010

Jay Reatard, gone but not forgotten.​It is depressing but accurate to note how inexorably the internet bends toward death, and how much of the work of professional critics these days is announcing it, verifying it, and making sense of it (often in that order, unfortunately). Michael Jackson, a ... More >>

Was 2010 The Best Year For Music Ever? Defending Taylor Swift And Hailing The-Dream

Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: Rob Harvilla, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. We'll be here all week! Happier times for us all​My friends, It's the confl ... More >>

Q&A: Japandroids' Brian King on Their Single Series, Disappointing PJ Harvey, and That Siren Festival Rumor

A pair of late bloomers, guitarist/vocalist Brian King and drummer/vocalist David Prowse had never been in a band before they graduated from the University of Victoria and started chaffing against responsible adulthood and career jobs. Which meant that when the Canadian duo formed Japandroids--pr ... More >>

No Age's Adrenaline Stage Continues

Everything in Between cements the L.A. semi-punks' graduation to Their Own Sound

Live: Deerhunter Close Down The Genius Bar At The Soho Apple Store

Taken with an Apple product out of brand loyalty​Deerhunter Soho Apple Store Tuesday, September 28 Better than: An intro course to GarageBand or whatever the hell ordinarily goes on in here. These Apple in-stores are super-weird. The tech-seminar vibe, the folks politely seated close enough ... More >>

Ty Segall

Happy Arcade Fire Day, Everyone

​Rejoice, ye lovers of absurdly grandiose indie-gone-arena-rock, for Arcade Fire's The Suburbs is out today, a full hour of anthemic chest-beating and regret-tinged nostalgia and Springsteenian grandiosity. Stream it here! Download it here for four bucks! Prepare thyself for their shows at MSG ... More >>

Best Coast and Wavves, Sitting in a Tree

In praise of two great records from California's pre-eminent surf-fuzz power couple

Wavves+ the Smith Westerns

Last Night: Wavves Inspire Moshing, Crowd-Surfing, Rampant Bliss

He's doing much better now. Pics by Georgia, way more below.​Wavves/Cloud Nothings/DOM Knitting Factory Thursday, June 24 The Northside Festival opening night was a hipster frat party in which every dude (and a few dudettes) tried to out-bro the next guy. Instead of shotgunning Budweisers, though ... More >>

'Northside Festival Presents Wavves'

Hole at Terminal 5: Is Courtney Love Scary? Not Anymore.

Hole Terminal 5 Tuesday, April 27 "Courtney Love is scary," is how the first Village Voice piece about Hole and its "genre-defying," Kim-Gordon-produced triumph Pretty on the Inside began. Published February 1992, this was the month after Nirvana's epochal Nevermind displaced Michael Jackson's pe ... More >>

Let's Get This Over With As Quickly As Possible: Here Are Jay Reatard's Autopsy Results

​From the Memphis Commercial Appeal: "Autopsy results released this morning in the death of Memphis musician Jay Reatard reveal that he died from 'cocaine toxicity, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in his death,' according to Shelby County Medical Examiner Karen E. Chancellor."

Week in Review: An Extra Side of Arrogance

R.I.P. Jay Reatard. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week our American Idol recapper made it all the way to the BBC for calling Victoria Beckham's face "too crazy", we also tossed epithets in the direction of the Times, in solidarity with M.I.A., and toward Esquire, who this week were forced to ... More >>

Live: The Drums And Surfer Blood Confound At Bowery Ballroom

Not a scene from Napoleon Dynamite The Drums/Surfer Blood Bowery Ballroom Wednesday, January 13 So the Drums, near as I can figure it, consist of four pretty-boy villains from cheesy '80s movies who've banded together to play twangy, relentlessly peppy new-wave with a canned backing track of ove ... More >>

Jay Reatard Dead at 29

​Goner Records confirms: "It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our good friend Jay Reatard. Jay died in his sleep last night. We will pass along information about funeral arrangements when they are made public." Reatard, whose real name was Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., was 29. The ... More >>

Remembering Jay Reatard in Photos

all photos by Rebecca SmeyneDeath by Audio, October 2007Here are a few photos Rebecca Smeyne took of Jay Reatard live in 2007 and 2008. Whatever you do, don't look at this. Or this. Absolutely awful.

Yes in My Backyard, Special New Year's Edition: Download A-Bones' "Outcast"

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent. Megan Dooley​Brooklyn's A-Bones make garage rock. Not "lo-fi" or "shitgaze" or "We own a copy of Nuggets" or "We post to the Goner board sometimes", but vintage no-fucking-around three-chords-and-a-y ... More >>

The Decade in Music Genre Hype

A solemn tribute to once-hot-shit trends that (mostly) won't be joining us in the '10s

Tonight! Thurston, Jimmy, Julian, or Wiz.

​Somewhat of a slow night, unless you're in for the Pixies at Hammerstein (featuring Jay Reatard!) or Sonic Youth at the Music Hall of Williamsburg (featuring, uh, Talk Normal!). Jimmy Buffett's at Madison Square Garden if you're into booze-soaked, beachy frivolity; Julian Plenti, a/k/a the Du ... More >>

News Roundup: David Paterson Hearts Jay-Z, Wavves Vs. Black Lips Anticlimax, Jay Reatard's Band Quits

--New York Governor David A. Paterson approves Jay-Z 's #1 spot on MTV's 2009 Hottest MCs in the Game list, and he let the cable channel know as much via e-mail. Vote-baiting, culture-critiquing gems included, "the MC that figures out that people 18 and older who got the right to vote in 1972 nev ... More >>

Talk to the Blog: Terminal Boredom's Rich Kroneiss on Haterism, Psychedelic Horseshit, and the "Indie Establishment" Oxymoron

Terminal Boredom began as a small webzine where garage rock aficionados critiqued new (preferably vinyl) releases. The site eventually added a messageboard, which soon attracted a wider arena of amateur opinionators who vented on everything from haircuts to shitty day jobs. It's also the place whe ... More >>

News Roundup: The Walkmen, Green Day, Jay Reatard

​ --The Walkman have announced a fall tour. The band, still supporting last year's massive You and Me, will play the already-announced Guggenheim August 14 as part of the It Came from Brooklyn series and then play a stacked double-bill with Dinosaur Jr. in Central Park on August 16. The rest o ... More >>

No Children Were Harmed By Jay Reatard at the Stuy Town Oval Last Night

So that bonkers Jay Reatard show last night in the middle of the Stuy Town oval, complete with small children and families and dogs and other things with which Reatard usually has an adverse relationship, apparently went off with a hitch. (Well, not entirely without a hitch; a concerned Brooklyn V ... More >>

Interview: Jay Reatard on Failures, Canada, Hot Dogs, and His Worst New York City Gig

"Most of the time, what's wrong with you is more interesting that what's right. What's right with you is fucking boring." Jay Lindsey started making music at 15 and has since played in a zillion different bands, releasing a zillion different recordings on what would seem like a zillion differen ... More >>

Vivian Girls+Times New Viking+Stupid Party

Live: Jay Reatard Acoustic, Sort Of, At A Wired Pop-Up Store

Interview: King Khan and BBQ

CMJ Day 3: Thank God Mission of Burma Has a Drummer

ALL HE KNOWS

Don't mess with Jay Reatard

This Week's Voice: Hip-Hop Honors, Kind of Blue, the Streets, Body of Lies, and More

More Geek-Snot Anthems From Jay Reatard

Times New Viking ACME Tonight at the Whitney

Jay Reatard Went to Junior High With Justin Timberlake

C(a)M(i) J(ournal) 2007: Peter & Bjorn, Vampire Weekend, Black Kids

Cool Kids, Black Kids, Drunk Kids, Cute Kids

The hits, misses, and feline-benefit shows of CMJ 2007