Jad Fair & R. Stevie Moore – FairMoore CD

Jad Fair & R. Stevie Moore – FairMoore CD "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 recogni