Jad Fair spent the first years of the new millennium, over a quarter century into his career, working with a variety of younger musicians in a sort of mentor role. Unfortunately, albums with
Yo La Tengo and
Teenage Fanclub sounded like nothing more than
Yo La Tengo and
Teenage Fanclub albums with
Jad Fair's loopy vocals stuck willy-nilly on top, a combination that didn't work as well as one might expect. Released in 2002,
FairMoore, which partners the Maryland native with Nashville-born, New Jersey-based D.I.Y. expert
R. Stevie Moore, is a far more productive and worthwhile album.
Moore has been creating his own idiosyncratic brand of home-brewed pop for even longer than
Fair (the earliest CD in his enormous catalog was recorded in 1968 by a 16-year-old
Moore and his high-school buddies!) and has an even more dedicated cult following; perhaps
Moore wasn't scared of
Fair's cult hero stature, but more likely, the two oddballs simply recognized each other's strengths and played to them. The result is the best album
Fair has been involved with since the heyday of
Half Japanese, and one of
Moore's most enjoyable efforts in years. Although
Moore takes only one lead vocal (on the trippy spoken word offering "Supreme Beings," which mixes one of his typically surreal flights of fancy with organ loops straight out of a Hammer horror feature), his inimitable musical style, which manages to sound utterly poppy and slightly twisted at the same time, is all over this album. (
Moore plays almost all of the instruments, barring a couple of guitar and percussion parts, and
Fair does nearly all the singing.) The combination of
Moore's accessible but odd melodies and arrangements with
Fair's stream-of-consciousness lyrics and one of a kind vocals is surprisingly satisfying. The songs are more "normal" than the deliberate primitivism of
Half Japanese's albums, yet (unlike the
Yo La Tengo and
Teenage Fanclub albums)
Moore's instinctive grasp of
Fair's unique aesthetic gives the album a pleasing unity. Songs like the analog synthesizer throb of "Yeah, You Betcha" and the
Bo Diddley-beat opener "Stationary" are downright catchy, something that's almost never been true of
Jad Fair's previous albums. Much more interesting than any of
Fair's other collaborations,
FairMoore is an essential release for fans of either of the participants.