10 Years of “Blood Visions”: The Best Rock Record You’ve Never Heard

To me, there is near nothing more stimulating than an amazing garage rock record. To achieve that perfect wall of sound, with guitars, drums, and bass slapping the listener across the face with pure awesome, all the while being concise is difficult for most artists to do in a song, let alone in an album. But Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr. (better known by his sarcastic stage name Jay Reatard) did just that. When someone starts to listen to rock music for the first time, garage rock, or one of its variants, is a genre that many flock to. Artists like The Strokes, The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, Weezer, or The Black Keys are all, or at one point were, popular garage rock artists that have made many hit albums and songs using this style. But while these artists all have some great songs and albums, none of them employ as much mania, spirit, and energy into their music as Jay did in his now 10 year-old masterpiece album Blood Visions. I may listen to a score of fairly inaccessible and/or sad music, but trust me when I say that if you are someone who enjoys awesome rock music, Blood Visions is a must-listen.

For starters, Blood Visions is probably the tightest album I’ve ever listened to. There is not a song on the album that drags for even a second, and every note has meaning and energy. Despite this controlled style of playing, the album is bombastic and almost chaotic in its sound. This type of controlled chaos is a staple of good garage rock and Jay employs it in every song. This style of writing and recording sounds like, and is, very much a “do-it-yourself” approach to a record. Written in the aftermath of a breakup with his band and with his longtime girlfriend/manager, Jay was told by his ex that he could not be successful or respected as a solo artist. Taking it like a challenge, Jay wrote and recorded the entire album by himself (outside of one song where another musician played bass, and another where that musician sang backup vocals, and one song which he was covering), which, if you are unfamiliar with recording processes, is a very rare occurrence and the mark of a true musician. With Blood Visions he more than proved his musical capabilities, and while the album cover is an homage to the horror movie Carrie that Jay loved, it is also supposed to represent rebirth, with him drenched in blood and near-naked as a representation of a child being born, which is what he felt like as he restarted his career. The recording on this album is gritty, choppy, and chaotic but it is perfect for his sound, and its roughness is exactly what this type of album needed, even inspiring many other garage rock bands to record in similar ways in the coming years.

The narrative of the album is also driven by Jay’s breakup and is as manic and simple as the music. In the wake of his break-up, Jay plays a caricature of himself whose ex is giving him “blood visions,” meaning he wants her dead. This melodramatic reaction goes throughout the whole album as Jay plots a murder and slowly goes insane. While he is jailed or sent away before he can complete this murder, Jay’s spiral into mania is melodramatic and occasionally hilarious, with such lines like, “Time may heal wounds, but I will kill you” that really put Jay’s state of madness on display. His murderous instincts and insane behavior are clearly supposed to be an extreme exaggeration for the purpose of creating a narrative, and create an atmosphere of dark comedy that clouds the album. This aggression that Jay displays throughout the album is also important for its grimy, manic tone as the listener descends into a giddy madness with Jay, heart pounding all the way.

Every guitar and bass line, as well as vocals and drums, is synchronized, melodic and just plain fun through and through. In simpler terms: every song straight-up rocks. Jay keeps a punk rock mentality throughout the record, despite being mainly a garage rock album, and with that comes the songs’ brevity. The longest song on the album (and the closest thing to a “hit” Jay ever had: “My Shadow”) clocks in at 3 minutes and 20 seconds, while the shortest (“Greed, Money, Useless Children) is only a mere 56 seconds. Blood Visions is mostly made up of 1-2 minute songs, but their short length does not make them any less powerful. Within their short running times, Jay can stick a melody into the listener’s head, convey his message, and have a complete song structure. There is no excess material or fluff on the album, every second of music has something to it and adds to the overall feel of the song or the album. And all 15 songs truly are memorable, so much so that I’d wager I could hum the melody to every one of them. Every song is punchy, but distinct. From the built-up and destructive anthem “My Shadow,” to Jay’s determined cries over the bright guitars of “Nightmares” every song has something to offer and deserves to be appreciated.

Jimmy Lee Lindsey, Jr. died on January 13, 2010 of a cocaine and alcohol overdose. Jay’s energy and bubbly personality were also offset by his demons and he never got to achieve the success that he most certainly would have had he continued on his career. Despite this tragedy, Blood Visions (as well as his second album Watch Me Fall) lives on and has inspired numerous garage rock musicians in its 10 years of existence, and it surely will will inspire many more. No other musician truly captured the garage rock spirit and “got it right” with a full-length album like Jay did, so I truly implore those who enjoy energetic garage rock and punk music to give Blood Visions a spin. And to Jay – someone who made one of the few records I consider perfect (and the only garage rock record I consider perfect) – when I attempt to make music half as good as you, “I’ll keep searching for you.”