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POP MUSIC
Janet Weiss, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney, whose delayed show was worth the wait.
(By John Clark)
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-- Mike Joyce
Tim Fite
Tim Fite considers himself as much a visual artist as a musical one. That much was obvious on the Black Cat's Backstage on Thursday, when a series of his drawings flashed on a screen between songs. And despite the partner onstage with him (triggering samples and electronic drums), Fite underscored that he alone played the instruments the crowd was hearing. Film of him doing it -- while in a wheelchair -- accompanied each tune.
Fite isn't disabled -- he boinged around the diminutive stage like a jack-in-the-box. He is clearly a postmodern trickster, though. A former leader of joke-rappers Little T & One-Track Mike, the Brooklyn-based Fite is a compulsive scourer of bargain record and CD bins. Many of the samples on his wide-ranging 2005 Anti Records debut, "Gone Aint Gone," undoubtedly came from forgotten recordings, but the results scanned like pop vertigo. He evoked Beck, Eminem, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Beach Boys and even, during "No Good Here," D.C. indie-rock heroes Unrest. All of which might be no different from what any bedroom-Phil Spector might conjure, but Fite's awkwardly affecting lyrics and halting rapping style turned "I Hope Yer There," "A Little Bit" and "Forty-Five Remedies" into affecting bits of pop-culture trash, evocative wads of melody bumping down a windy street.
The closing "Away From the Snakes" was even better. The year's best I-been-stomped-on-too-long song, its pinched folk melody is enough to make a case for Fite's being signed to a major deal -- with a bonus of all the bargain-bin discs he can carry.
-- Patrick Foster
