Jay Reatard Will Sell Out, Literally

Jay Reatard has done things his own way throughout his music career. He's not about to change now that he's getting some overdue recognition.

"I don't take into consideration what anyone fuckin' says," explains the man born Jay Lindsey about the backlash from some of his more devout followers towards his latest single, "See/Saw." "If you're an artist, you can't do that."

The song sees Reatard moving away (ever so slightly) from the frantic, aggressive, garage punk that garnered so much attention for 2006's Blood Visions. He seems uninterested when acknowledging that some fans have complained that the track is "too soft."

"I don't really listen to one genre of music, so I always try to jump around," he says of the eclecticism, in a year that has also seen him release a full-length electro-punk record under the name Terror Visions. "If I can't sell 20,000 records of one style of music, then I'll sell 20,000 records of five different records that I did that are all different styles."

If one thing is certain about Reatard's forthcoming set of six limited-edition seven-inch singles on Matador, it's that none of them will sell 20,000 copies. They aren't making that many.

"See/Saw" was given an allotment of 3,500 copies and nearly sold-out a mere two weeks after Matador started taking pre-orders. In a rather strange move, the runs of the subsequent five singles will get smaller. The final release will top out at a mere 400 slabs of vinyl that will no doubt sell out instantly.

"There are a lot of record collector-type people that buy my stuff, and it's kind of fun to make them scramble around trying to find things," jokes Reatard. "The first is selling out really fast, so I guess the last one — it's kind of weird to think that it'll only be available for about 20 minutes."

The remaining five Matador singles will be staggered over the course of 2008. In the meantime, Reatard is on the road. He just finished an opening stint with The Black Keys that saw him play Vancouver.

"We're playing in front of a couple thousand people every night," says Reatard of The Black Keys gigs. "It's like a different planet.

"Now it's back to our own little tiny world of clubs and dirty bars and stuff. I'm looking forward to that, actually."

Catch Reatard here:

April 16 Ottawa, ON @ Babylon
April 17 Toronto, ON @ Silver Dollar w/CPC Gangbangs
April 18 Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa w/CPC Gangbangs