Those who knew Jay Reatard have been responding to the news of the singer’s shocking death.

“This is very sad news,” Spoon frontman Britt Daniel said in a statement. “Jay was a one-of-a-kind guy with an incredible spirit. He was a great rock and roller. He will be sorely missed.” (Spoon and Reatard shared a stage more than once, most recently at a Dec. 31, 2009 show in Milwaukee.)

“We want to express our condolences to the friends and family of Jay Reatard, on his sudden passing today,” the Pixies said in a post on their Facebook page.

“Jay was what few people have the capacity to be,” Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox wrote in a blog post. “He created an undeniably classic album that contained so much pain transferred to tape in such an explosive way that it made you feel different after hearing it. He was transgressive and honest…I am truly sickened to see him go.” (Cox and Reatard’s work together included covering each other’s music.)

Jered Gummere, frontman of The Ponys and a friend of Reatard’s, wrote via email, “It’s so hard to sum up a friendship in one sentence, but the thing I will always remember is he put every ounce of his soul and every emotion he had in every song he ever wrote. I love him like a brother.”

Alex Hammond, who made the 2009 Jay Reatard documentary Waiting for Something, told EW that, when she filmed the singer in the spring of last year, the director, “had an amazing time with him. He was an incredible philosopher, he had a heart, and I think a lot of people from the outside didn’t see that side of him. We had this feeling when we were with him that he wanted to do bigger and better things. So this is completely shocking.” Hammond’s co-director Ian Markiewicz was equally stunned by the news. “My first thought was that I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “He was a really extroverted, crazy, kind of personality. But at the same kind he was really grounded. Jay was like no other.”

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More on Jay Reatard:
Jay Reatard dies at age 29
EW’s review of Watch Me Fall
Jay Reatard & Friends in concert, October 2009

Acclaimed indie rocker Jay Reatard has died at age 29. His label, Matador Records, confirmed his passing in an online post: “We are devastated by the death of Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., aka Jay Reatard. Jay was as full of life as anyone we’ve ever met, and responsible for so many memorable moments as a person and artist. We’re honored to have known and worked with him, and we will miss him terribly.” Details on the manner and cause of his death were not immediately available, but one newspaper is reporting that he was found dead at home in Memphis at 3:30 this morning.

This awful news is doubly tragic because of where Jay was in his career. 2010 should have been a banner year for him. After years of building buzz for his releases on tiny labels, the prolific Memphis native had recently signed with big-time indie Matador Records, which released his excellent LP Watch Me Fall last August. That record’s blend of punk attitude and indelible melodies won him many rave reviews, including one published in EW. In that review, I called Watch Me Fall “a bravura performance that ought to win this blog favorite the widespread recognition his songcraft deserves.” It was clear from an outside listener’s perspective that Jay’s songwriting was evolving at an exponential rate, and it’s simply too sad for words that we’ll never get to hear what he would have done next.

We at the Music Mix extend our genuine condolences to the friends and family of this talented artist. Please share your thoughts and memories of Jay Reatard in the comments section below.

More on Jay Reatard:
Colleagues react to his death
EW’s review of Watch Me Fall
Jay Reatard & Friends in concert, October 2009

(Follow the Music Mix on Twitter: @EWMusicMix.)

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