Anti
2008
Fair Ain't Fair
About This Album
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.
Track List (try tracks 4,7,11,15 and 16)

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