A thread that ran through The Wire's recent cover feature on R. Stevie Moore highlighted how often the singer has battled against preconceptions formed about his music. The "lo-fi" tag is often attached, even though many of his best recordings purposefully battle against the kind of tape-recorder grime the likes of Guided by Voices deliberately wield as an aesthetic tool. Moore also commented on how little he had in common with "outsider artists" with whom he is constantly bracketed, giving a nod to the talents of Wesley Willis and Daniel Johnston while highlighting how his skills as an arranger put him in a different league. In fact, as Wire writer Matthew Ingram asks: "Why is he in the 'weird' camp at all?" Part of the reason is the 400 or so albums he's released since the late 1960s, coupled with the fact that he's still working at a prodigious rate despite turning 60 earlier this year. Anyone attempting to find an entry point into his work would be forgiven for feeling over-awed by the sheer breadth of it-- something this compilation seeks to address.
Moore was born the son of famed Nashville musician Bob Moore, who counted gigs as a sideman for Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Bob Dylan among his towering achievements. His uncle, Harry Palmer, is best known for discovering the ultimate outsider music act, the Shaggs. It's difficult to sum up the work of a man with so many recordings to his name, but somewhere between father and uncle lies Moore, pulling in pure pop influences and rinsing them through his off-center take on the world. For a long time it looked like he would be perma-bracketed as a musician's musician, the type of guy feted by other artists but barely known to the outside world. Ariel Pink has been Moore's most famous cheerleader, but dig a little deeper and you'll find collaborations with Jad Fair, Mike Watt, and MGMT among others. Tim Burgess of the Charlatans, another former collaborator, has issued Lo Fi High Fives on his O Genesis label, making it the latest in a string of compilations (including the Pink-curated Ariel Pink's Picks Vol. 1 from last year) that attempt to make sense of his greater body of work.
Except, of course, this is a pebble skimming across the surface of that output. There are few signs of Moore's excursions into rap, post-punk, metal, or techno. Instead, the dial twitches between his knowing take on pop and his fondness for Ween-style prankster rock. Sometimes those two worlds collide, most often when Moore draws his audience a little too close to anything that could be marked as "sentiment." On "Find Any" he sings of being "sick of singing about girls because I can't find any." But Moore tempers the feeling by turning the lyric into feeling "sick of singing about cats because I can't find any," complete with screeching "miaow" noises. Such lyrical rug-pulls are commonplace in Moore's songs, and may partially explain the disconnect with a wider audience. Just when it feels like you can lean in to get close to him, he's ready with the songwriting equivalent of one of those flowers that clowns use to squirt a jet of water into your eye.
Humor is key to Moore's arsenal, although much of his musical inspiration is drawn from a string of artists who are a lot more at ease with laying themselves bare. The influence of Brian Wilson and the Beatles figures prominently on Lo Fi High Fives. "Here Comes the Summer Again" is a note-perfect Beach Boys pastiche, while the more impressive "I Go Into Your Mind" channels both "In My Room"-style melancholy and the haunted Disney fantasias Mercury Rev were chasing circa Deserter's Songs. On the opening "Pop Music", Moore wraps his singular commentary on pop around playing that combines shades of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with the pomp of ELO and subtle honky-tonk piano stabs. All of the above help back up Moore's claims for his skills as an arranger, but it's when he steps away from self-consciously aping pop history that his work finds its unique depth. On "Big Mistake" he sounds genuinely lost and confused by the world, digging hard into the feeling of being cut adrift from his peers and the public for so long. A yearning for wider acceptance creeps into his most impressive work, a sense that he's drawing on the unusual energy created by releasing song after song into what must have seemed like a total void.
But that's only a fraction of Moore's story, as told by this album's diversions into power pop ("You and Me"), scruffy psychedelia ("Sentimental Ties"), and the hollowed-out Ariel Pink collaboration "Dutch Me". What's remarkable about Lo Fi High Fives is how instantly familiar much of this material feels. Partly that's due to Moore's ear for emulating the songwriting techniques of others, but he has a way with song structure and melody that makes it feel like some of this stuff has been floating around in the ether forever. "Why Should I Love You" is so brilliantly simple and catchy that it has "hit single" written all over it (and, indeed, others have felt the same way). It's hard not to wonder what the cumulative affect this whole process had on Moore's psyche-- Pink wrote some pop gems early in his career ("Helen", "Alisa", "Every Night I Die at Miyagis") but subsequently stumbled into success. Moore remains lodged in a gap somewhere between tiny personal victories and an utter failure to connect, and it's in that tension that he produces his best work.
Why are we so drawn to someone like Moore, whose catalog is too vast for even the most ardent fan to fully grasp, who seems intent on throwing myriad curveballs in our path just when we think we're getting to know him? The reason, at least in part, is that it's a disarmingly honest way to operate. Not everyone can go down the route of, say, Lou Barlow or Elliott Smith, who were both capable of delving into an alarmingly personal train of thought every time they stepped up to a microphone. Moore has elements of that for sure, but he's also unafraid of coming across as clumsy, confused, perhaps even a little shy. There's value in expressing the feeling that occurs when you pull back from the brink by telling a dumb joke just when you think you've said too much. And Moore has arguably said more than most. Tales of artists who never got their dues are legion, but Lo Fi High Fives does enough to suggest that Moore deserves a place near the top of that particular pecking order. Thankfully, he's still out there. A new album already tucked under his arm. A dreamer, still dreaming.
