Tim Fite
Gone Ain't Gone

I like this guy.
I like this album.
I will listen to it again. And again.
Inside his songs, where he blends pieces of CDs found in bargain baskets at supermarkets, there's something that remains suspended like a promise that no one dreams of keeping.
And it leaves a bit of space around, to stretch the legs in a walk through the "genres," with the attitude that pleases me, which includes mistakes and uncertainties, mood swings, unresolved areas, and sudden flashes. And not driven by the anxiety of being in the right place, in the indecipherable network where, nearly every day, someone will plant the flag designating the next big thing.
So, I’m naive. But I believe in this guy.
I believe in the things he tells in the interview (which you can find in more info) that I unearthed while searching for information about him after listening to "Gone Ain’t Gone," purchased without questions (besides: "give me an album that I will like") from my pusher near the office.

Oh, yes. Beck, of course.
At certain moments (now, as I listen, track 17 that closes the album, "The More You Do" for instance) how can one help but evoke his name?
However, again, I agree with the guy: it’s the Beck he prefers, the early Beck, walking with him. With the same natural gait of a curious and amused wanderer, with the same light hobbling stride of the new hobo between the grooves of old vinyl or among the scraps of the music market, instead of on the railroad track.
But in the succession of moods, settings, sounds (indeed, all the stolen sounds fit perfectly with the new clothes that Tim has sewn with them) this debut outlines the traits of a personality that avoids, along the path, being swallowed by the broad shadow cast by the blondie.
And a record emerges that is in its own way homogeneous, in the unlikely mix, prepared with ease and served without tricks, of hip hop, folk, post this and post that, you name it.
I add the usual handful of samples, so you get a less cumbersome idea than what might emerge from these lines.

He says he is too slow with his hands to write songs that require very fast chord changes.
I have nothing else to say.
How I like this guy.

In track 6, "I've Keep Singing," Tim uses portions of a speech by Paul Robeson.
He is a figure worth knowing at least briefly.
I found this article that seems interesting to me.