Jad Fair – His Name Itself is Music

Jad Fair’s latest is a rambling collection of bewilderingly odd performance poetry, accompanied by intermittent samples and percussion. One set of Dadaist musings follows another – “chocolate pie, chocolate pole, yeah yeah yeah sweet watermelon, never not explode,” he burbles on Paper and Pen – and over fifteen tracks, the approach inevitably grates. It’s akin to listening through all of the spoken-word tracks on Trout Mask Replica in a row, repeatedly, with the important difference that Fair’s lyrical universe lacks the genuinely otherworldly surrealism of Don Van Vliet’s.

Overall, His Name... is one of those records which sounds like it was a lot more fun to record than it is to listen to – which you suspect is sort of the point. Fair’s approach to music has always been spontaneous and instinctive, guided solely by his intuitive sense of expression. Here, the method has produced one of his less rewarding records, but one that nonetheless exhibits the thread of restless creativity which runs through all of his work. [Sam Wiseman]