The album art for Jay Reatard's Blood Visions

Jay Reatard

Blood Visions

Blood Visions is a sad reminder that Jay Reatard is no longer with us, but that's because it's a delightful punk record. It sounds at once familiar, like The Ramones, but it also has all the quirks that Reatard had. It's tight and no production detailed is spared, making it a near-perfect thirty-minute slab of punk rock.

Blood Visions is one of my favourite Jay Reatard records: it works great at the gym, but it’s also an insanely quirky punk record with a million moving parts. And it never slows down: this thing always moves at a million miles an hour.

You can hear a ton of the Misfits influence, but there’s also a poppy style that breaks in that can be easily traced back to the Ramones. And I can hear a ton of Minor Threat in here too.

Like the best punk, Blood Visions feels like it’s stuck in a time machine from the 80s. Which makes it so easy to love for fans of the genre.