Useless Eaters and Jay Reatard at Le Poisson Rouge 10-1-09

Pics by Molly

I ended up checking out Le poisson rouge for the first time Friday night since I heard Jay Reatard was bringing his Shattered Records tour there. It was an amazing lineup, Jay, Box Elders, No bunny, Hunx...insane. I've been meaning to check out the space, they've been booking really varied shows there and I kind of thought it must be a fairly small space being on Bleecker Street...so if Jay was playing there then it couldn't be all that bad. The space is pretty crazy, a little fancy pants but has a great stage, and great sound. It's a perfect alternative to Bowery, bigger than Mercury, but it's not so huge that it's pointless. Someone clued me into Jay playing with the first band Useless Eaters, and since the show wasn't starting until 11:30 or so I figured on catching them and I'm glad I did. Seth Sutton is a maniac, the second they got on he was jumping around, and listening to his myspace stuff, this stripped down thin sounding punk was a different story live. I like the recorded tracks a lot, don't get me wrong, but like Jay and Ty, it somehow gets better live. When you see it with the energy that Seth has, every song is great...he blew me away. I can see why Jay was supporting on bass, it's great that he's helping all these bands out first of all, starting his label, turning the whole thing into a way to get exposure for all this stuff he's obviously into. There was an insane light show going on at first and Jay squashed it two songs in. 'Can you stop with the overhead lights? Just turn em off. This ain't no fucking rave alright?' Seth plays with this great tight reverb echo, at times it's pretty minimal, like 'Malfunction' starts out with a great bassline with his tight bursts of melody. Single notes to punchy hard chords. It's that post-punk, punked back up sound. He's got the perfect combination of stripped down, catchy pop punk down, I'm sure he's like 19 and it figures. He's heard it all I'm sure, but then out of sheer balls, just takes it to a new place. I can't remember the last time I was completely along for the ride a few songs in. Especially since he's such a great performer...he's amazing, I was into every song. Incredible. So of course this morning I've been trying to track down anything he's got out. Luckily there's this single from Goner, couldn't find it on their site though, maybe it's gone already, or didn't go up yet, but it's available at Midheaven and Insound.

Jay's show was amazing, as usual, he's even great at bigger venue's but here it was complete mayhem, the tiny space was one big mosh pit, people flying around, I could barely pat attention watching for falling bodies. There was just no where else to go once he started playing, the place erupted. I kind of understand why beer just goes flying, they're possessed, it's like an epileptic convulsion...whatever's in you hand goes flying. He got pissed at one point about someones smelly sweater. He was yelling at them to stop something...I don't know...he yells for a minute and then kills 'Greed money useless children' and who knows, he's a force.