Five years ago last month, Jimmie Lee Lindsey, best known as Jay Reatard, succumbed to an accidental drug overdose in his sleep. Expectedly, things have gone a little quiet regarding the music and influence of Jay’s 15-year run (1995–2010); we’re at the quiet-zone in the retrospection cycle—too early to full process his legacy writ large without listing hyperbolic, plus it always feels "too soon." Regardless, a specific chapter in the career this Memphis-based force of nature is in need of some corrective action; one that deserves a more esteemed position in the written history of underground rock as well as a more prominent turn in the ongoing cultural conversation therein. The Lost Sounds came together in mid-1998 around Lindsey, co-songwriter/co-founder Alicja Trout, and drummer Rick Crook, who had recently moved to Memphis from Jackson, Miss. The band came apart, for good, six years later.
As of this writing, the band’s standing body of work (including posthumous releases) consists of four proper full-lengths along with a mini-album, four album-length collections of demo/outtake/b-sides, and four 7” EPs/singles. Until the surfacing of a document that can translate the Lost Sounds’ ability to erase any other act it shared a stage with, we have this catalog as the most impactful, tangible and permanent of their legacy--and one that stands solidly on its own merits as a self-contained achievement. It is a discography that easily transcends the band’s contextual residence under the Jay Reatard legacy banner. At the same time, reconciling its role in defining Jay’s fifteen years of activity and entire mountain of work is a catalog and narrative not only paramount to dictating what came next in and outside of his 2005-2010 solo career, but rife with music that’s just as rewarding and in some cases, more so.
The band initially applied the basics of American synth-driven post-punk—Devo, Chrome, Suicide, the Screamers, etc.—to what’s been termed the "second" or "new wave" of the garage-punk that grew in the wake of whatever one might want to call the movement led by the Gories, Oblivians, Cheater Slicks, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, New Bomb Turks, etc. because that’s where they found themselves by default of the already somewhat nationally-established Reatards. Though this nook of the American underground would soon give the similarly adventurous retro-styled forward-thinkers like the Dirtbombs, the traditionalist genius of Greg Cartwright’s (aka Greg Oblivian) Reigning Sound, and two duos that would reach mega-stardom (The White Stripes and the Black Keys), it was nonetheless ruled by a stylistically purist mindset, one as conservative as early-to-mid-'80s American hardcore. Instruments with keys that were acceptable in the party-time-in-the-cave sense (The Woggles), surf-rock revivalism, or how Quintron used them on the gospel covers album (...Play Nine Songs with Mr. Quintron) threw Jay’s "I can do this, too!" switch to the "I must destroy this!" setting.
Though an arc of increasing quality and achievement does steer the entire Lost Sounds narrative, there was something special in the water from the very start. There would be no debut release from this band that would go on to detrimentally represent future excellence. The first song on the band’s first self-titled 7” EP (originally dropped in 1999 and reissued/remastered in 2011 by Goner Records), Lindsey’s "Plastic Skin"–despite its predictable title, hits with hard evidence in support of a band with sub-genre conventions erased into the margins of concern. Recorded by the first of what would be about 2,461 different supporting lineups that rotated around the static core trio, the song’s first few seconds are the rule for updating art-punk circa Y2K and onwards: The guitar riff that shadows the blocks of synth abuse and Jay’s histrionic singingsounding like a rabid Nick Cave pitch-shifted to 5X speed. Then the curveball "chorus" hits with screaming, noise, and most importantly, the melodic (even pretty!) vocal hook underpins the chaos.
From Memphis Is Dead (the band’s 2000 full-length debut) has a noisy eclecticism that was a byproduct of Trout and Lindsey’s respective and individual interest in outre sounds. The duo pulled it all off naturally—an ineffable gift—while avoiding the "trying too hard" kiss of death.
Alicja’s cover art (she would handle all of the band’s visual presentation) for the Lost Sounds’ second album, 2001’s double-length Black Wave, suggests a release prior to September 11th and continues the band’s tendency towards literal meaning in album and song titling. The "black" refers to the type of metal Trout and Lindsey were inspired by (specifically the desperation, darkness and recording fidelity peculiars of prime Burzum and Darkthrone), which was put into the mix as deftly as everything else. The "wave" is more obvious, though a strong wager would be on "dark," not the "new" prefix. Jay’s rager "1620 Echles St" and Trout’s "Ocelot Rising" were the two standouts as well as the tracks featuring Memphis Symphony Orchestra cellist Jonathan Kirkscey, who would play a more prominent role on the next album and flesh out the larger live lineups in a local capacity.
In an excellent late-life profile of Jay, titled "Shit Magnet", an unnamed label exec that participated in the late-2007 Jay Reatard-centered bidding war is quoted as saying: "Kurt Cobain killed hair metal, you’re going to kill emo." The assassination in question actually too place years earlier, across the epic Black Wave album. The band’s sophomore effort fortified the Lost Sounds' proprietary knack for balancing extremity and pop-gold and today sounds like more of a classic moment on the post-hardcore historical timeline than the high-water mark for garage-punk achievement.
The album was yet another blueprint to build from, as it was followed by an expanded six-piece lineup that sharpened Black Wave’s experimentation into a more precise sound for 2002’s Rat Brains and Microchips album. Then there was the necessitated efficiency of the smaller four-piece behind the Future Touch EP and the final self-titled album (both released in 2004). These releases don’t make it easy to cherry-pick strong points, but Trout’s "Radon Flows" (from Rat Brains), "Destructo Comet", and huge "Clones Don’t Love" (Lost Sounds) are all major highlights in her also-massive body of work. The same can be said for Jay’s "There’s Nothing", "I Get Nervous", and "I Sit I Watch I Wait" (all Lost Sounds). Walls of guitar and pop hooks were now in a race to dominate the Lost Sounds' sound, blotting the sub-genre baggage and aesthetic time-stamping, which are rightfully erased into the margins.
The scope of influence Trout and Lindsey had upon each other’s future are difficult to measure, though they are undebatable. Jay’s explorations into more melodic territories pop skills date to way back in the Lost Sounds stretch, though he would take it into different places in front of a much larger audience once the band was finished. The competitive race the two songwriters found themselves in was all part of contributing to the bigger cause at hand, but no small part of Jay's insane work ethic and drive was honed alongside Trout's massive creative ambitions. Jay would most certainly channel his intense resentment of their collaboration into the writing and recording of the breakthrough Blood Visions a mere month or two after the Lost Sounds ended. Lost Sounds creative peak was when his iconoclastic streak came to fruition and this era casts a long shadow over the rest of his career. These two alpha personalities each had a need to exert control, which lead them to start numberable side projects. Both musicians were motivated by an intense competition with each other and were romantically involved from a short time after the beginning of the band until late 2004. To view Trout as a catlyst for Reatard's greatness is tempting--but she was hardly the muse, hers was the A-game he was trying to beat.
Every second of the Lost Sounds' music that exists was recorded at home, only going outside for mastering and final processes. "Tronic Graveyard" meant Trout's home setup, eventually expanded to 24-track capability during the final year, but Jay’s "Tape Hiss Is Good Studios" does pop up on select recordings. Trout’s extracurricular projects as founder, sole creator or member during the Lost Sounds’ era included MouseRocket, the Fitts, River City Tanlines, Black Sunday, C.C. Riders, and several eponymously-monikered outlets. The label she founded with Jay, Contaminated Records (active 2003 to 2008) would go on to release over 25 titles, including the recorded debut of Chicago’s the Ponys. Jay would moonlight in the Bad Times, the Final Solutions, Evil Army, Terror Visions, and many others. The duo joined former Reatard Ryan Rousseau in the initial incarnation of Destruction Unit for that band’s first two albums. Trout and Lindsey channeled much more synth-centric and poppier energy into the Nervous Patterns for a 7” and full-album (2003 and 2004).
The Lost Sounds story, by and large, is one of very hard work defined by inter-band chaos and unpleasant memories for all parties involved. Like Jay Reatard’s career as a whole, this particular chapter is a mind-melting perfect storm of conflicting realities and unrealities. The Lost Sounds’ trajectory perfectly parallels "the other ‘before the Internet’" years of Myspace and message boards, right up to the cusp of the Interhole 2.0 that would giveth (after sitting around for months, Blood Visions is one of the earliest benefactors of blogger-only buzz) and taketh away once Lindsey experienced the total flip of the coin as a guinea pig for YouTube/comments-section/bloggosphere career detriment. Told in reverse through these channels and interview content, the decade since the Lost Sounds broke up has been less-than-kind to the band’s legacy.
Time and time again throughout the Lost Sounds' discography there is songwriting attributed directly to Jay that puts later moments of praise into a different perspective. Like, why exactly did the whole world go fucking apeshit when he covered the Go-Betweens or started to "go pop" when more impressive moments litter these four proper albums, four album-length collections, plus slew of EP’s and 7”s? This isn’t an effort to turn a revisionist’s blind eye to all of the personal and artistic negativity, nihilism, malevolence, and general darkness translated through this band’s music and challenging its progress many steps of the way. The Jay Reatard that made the current garage-underground obsession possible was himself made possible by the Lost Sounds. But like much of what’s stated above, the impact of this fact would be much weaker without the soundtrack the band left behind.