Strange But True was first released on Matador Records in 1998
The song titles were taken from outrageous newspaper headlines which David Fair wrote lyrics around
Jad Fair is the founding member of lo-fi alternative rock group Half Japanese who have released over 30 records
Jad Fair is a prolific collaborator and has worked with Yo La Tengo, Daniel Johnston, The Pastels, Sonic Youth, and Teenage Fanclub to name a few
Yo La Tengo are a critically acclaimed indie-rock band that have produced over 15 studio albums and numerous film scores
Despite achieving mainstream success, Yo La Tengo has been called “the quintessential critics’ band” and maintains a strong cult following
Yo La Tengo’s most recent album This Stupid World came out on Matador Records in 2023
Cover painting by David Fair
Available on MINT GREEN Vinyl, CD & out digitally
RIYL : The Magnetic Fields, Daniel Johnston, Half Japanese, Captain Beefheart, Beat Happening, The Microphones, Guided by Voices, Pavement, Silver Jews, Built to Spill
In the ’90s, Jad Fair had five favorite bands and songwriters: Daniel Johnston, The Pastels, Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub, and Yo La Tengo. It’s a good list, sure, but what’s most remarkable about it is that, in the course of a dozen years or so, Fair made music with all of them in one form or another.
Jad Fair has been prolific for half a century now, long before the Internet could create a simultaneous and seemingly eternal archive of everything someone with his predilections made. He’s been involved in several hundred titles, at least, many of them out-of-print on tiny labels that do not exist anymore. In fact, one of those collaborations that Fair made in the ’90s—Strange But True, with Yo La Tengo—has been hard to find, despite its stateside release on October 20th 1998, by Matador Records.
For the first time, the album is being reissued on vinyl by Joyful Noise and Bar/None.
By the time Fair played a party with Yo La Tengo in the mid-’90s, they were all friends, fans, and collaborators, having worked on or released records together. When Fair suggested they all head into the studio, the trio bit. The result, Strange But True, is as wonderful, varied, and wild as some enormous lawn of native grasses. This collaborative album showcases the artists’ uncanny range, bringing us back to a time when indie rock was still free to be as weird and unruly as its makers wanted it to be.
