Reatards: Teenage Hate/Fuck Elvis Here’s The Reatards

James Lee Lindsey—a.k.a. Jay Reatard—was a teenage Oblivians fan when he made his first home recordings as “the Reatards,” fueled by garage-rock, punk, and the screechier edge of new wave. Later, he descended even further into the murk with dozens of other bands and side projects. Then shortly before his death in 2010, Reatard began to clean up his sound, letting the hooks that were always buried deep in his music come to the surface. Reatard’s last few years of singles and albums (from Blood Visions onward) are his best work, but there’s something to be said for the purity of the songs collected on Goner Records’ reissue of the Reatards’ 1998 debut LP, Teenage Hate. Goner fills out the reissue with other early Reatards recordings (including the entirety of the EP Fuck Elvis Here’s The Reatards, which Oblivians co-founder Greg Cartwright midwifed), but Teenage Hate is the main attraction: 18 distorted, yelping, frenzied songs about being young, rootless, lovesick and angry.