Tim Fite

If Tim Fite's goal is to be the topic of passionate debaters trying to figure out whether he’s a genius or a lunatic, then Fair Ain't Fair should be considered mission accomplished. The album begins with "Roots of a Tree," an ominous, see-sawing piano riff that builds until layers of Fite's vocals bark overtop one another. And while you're stuck trying to figure out what’s happening, the album moves on without you.

The rest of Fair Ain't Fair continues on a similar vein, and layers and layers of evidence for listeners to pick through, no matter which side of the debate you’re on. Whether you are trying to decipher the whispers in the background of "The Names of all the Animals," or simply trying to maintain your balance during "The Barber," Fite leaves you no shortage of things to think about.

What perhaps is most unsettling is when Fite steps away from the odd, Tom Waits-inspired sound—that peppers the majority of the album—and injects a sweet little acoustic ditty. "One Big Mistake" and "Sing Along" both creep awfully close to Jack Johnson's syrupiness, but given the context are so out of place as to wonder... what was he thinking?

The best part about Fair Ain't Fair is that the genius-versus-lunatic dynamic is never resolved. Tim Fite may be both, or he may be neither, but he's created the aural equivalent of train wreck whose tragic beauty is nearly impossible to look away from.

—Nathan Atnikov
05.19.08

A year in the making, following his critically acclaimed (and free for download) attack on materialism, Over the Counter Culture, Tim Fite continues expanding on his musical process, in which he treats the sounds in his head like construction paper as he cuts, pastes, and stacks notes and noises to build musical collages. While the last album mixed white-boy hip-hop and folk with a kaleidoscope of samples to earn quick comparisons to Mellow Gold-era Beck, Fair Ain't Fair has the feel of Tom Waits songs performed by the Eels and produced by a Grandaddy and Wyclef tag team. No raps to be found this time around. Instead, he sings in a surprisingly perfect pitch, with his vocal twang layered in three part harmonies, over modern-day country jigs and jingle-jangle melodies stylized with electronic bleeps and bloops. It's a sample-heavy album, but instead of dollar bin CD snippets acting as chief building blocks for the songs, they're the icing on a cake made of organic instrumentation. A dozen artists contributed to Fite's quest to turn his sparse musical ideas into wonderfully lush arrangements, including Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), Danielle Stech Homsy (Rio en Medio), and Sufjan Stevens' backing band. Drum parts were recorded overnight at Fite's old high school and tracked before he and his cast of performers added slack key guitar, chimes, piano, banjo, pedal steel, bass, mandolin, viola, and a potpourri of indecipherable sounds. The pop textures are more evident, the melodies are more hook-laden, and the overall vibe is more laid-back than past releases, varying in moods from positively gleeful to terribly melancholy. Even with the brunt of Fair Ain't Fair focused on the theme of post-apocalyptic regret, childish whimsy shines through (as expected from someone who authored an imaginative fairy tale titled -Beans): a slide whistle interrupts the apologies of "Yesterday's Garden" as he confesses "I guess you know that yesterday, I ran your garden over, girl," and silly chants of "a horse is a horse of course of course" and "Hey! Hey! Hay is for horses," lighten up the anti-consumer anthem "More Clothes." Like in previous albums, "Fist" continues to thumb his nose at greed and capitalism, ending "Sing Along," a "la la" song catchy enough to be his first radio single, with an afterthought, "This right here would sound real good, I think, personally...real nice for a car commercial or something...maybe something for Maxi Pads, you know, 'cuz a lot of people use 'em." It's both a jovial field day, and a provocative question mark aimed at society, showing that even someone with the creative flow of a seven year old can have a thought-provoking and mature release. ~ Jason Lymangrover, All Music Guide