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If there ever was a man born to rock and roll and release records all night long, it’s Jay Reatard, and he has another album cooked and ready to serve through Matador Records on August 18 (US release date), entitled Watch Me Fall. Yes, you read right, not a bunch of limited edition 7″ vinyl time bombs, but a fully-fledged, self-produced album.

Following his pair of singles compilations released on Matador and In The Red, this is Jay’s first album since 2006’s Blood Visions.  Earlier this year, Jay described the making of Watch Me Fall to Matador Records’ Andrew Earles :

“This new album has been challenging. It’s the first time I’ve written and recorded an album specifically because a label wants to release it. I’ve never made a record for a record label. I’ve always finished my recordings and then a label is decided on. When I made ’Blood Visions’ I had no idea that it was going to see the light of day. And I’ve never made a record in which the label heard the songs, or anyone heard the songs, before the album was finished, so that’s kind of intense. That’s what singles are for; I always considered my singles as a glimpse between the albums. Labels always had the previous single as an example of where I was going at the time, or of what the next album might sound like. In this situation, people at the label are hearing the songs before the album has been finished, but I try not to let it distract me, I’m trying to go about this process in a way that’s the closest to how I would have done an album in the past. A lot of bands these days, they approach the making of an album like it’s collecting songs, they don’t think about how all of the songs are going to work together. They sequence their albums on iTunes, wondering what songs sound best next to each other rather than putting them together as they were written. That’s not an album.”

You can all get a first taste of Watch Me Fall right now, with the infectious shake, tambourine-rattle and roll of “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me“. It’s just like what I was saying yesterday, “what the world needs now isn’t love, it’s more Jay Reatard” and here it is. Wish in one hand and shit wish granted in the other.

Also… is it me or does Jay Reatard look like Jack Nicholson in The Shining in that photo? All that’s missing is an axe, or a Flying V.