Teenage Hate was first released in 1998, and was the first full-length record from the prolific and wildly talented punk rocker Jimmy Lee Lindsey, Jr. who, at 17, had already adopted the surname Reatard. This exhaustive reissue — which includes tracks from two early cassettes, The Reatards and Fuck Elvis, Here's the Reatards, a whopping 39 songs (!) total — arrives nearly a year and a half after Lindsey's untimely death at the age of 29.

For casual fans or those only acquainted with Lindsey's work under the solo Jay Reatard moniker, Teenage Hate might come across strikingly raw. Lindsey's muse was constantly evolving; so much so that his final record, Watch Me Fall, was practically a pop album, complete with acoustic guitars and an actual music video. It's painful to think about Lindsey's potential, and his nascent talent is evident in these early songs, which are heavily indebted to the blues leanings of Lindsey's heroes, the Oblivians. They also offer an astonishing snapshot of how much his output changed in the dozen subsequent years. Yes, these songs are caustic and unforgiving, but they're also thrilling, and their obvious passion, in hindsight, points the way to his frantic later output like… read more »