Though Guided by Voices songs by and large aren't terribly complex compositions, neither are they very straightforward. Robert Pollard usually does something with the structure -- be it an odd strum pattern, a herky-jerky beat or an unexpected melody line -- to make even the simplest song inherently interesting.
"Fair Touching" is the rare exception, an incredibly straightforward song built on the kind of strum pattern and drum beat that has launched a thousand and one garage bands. Even Pollard's melody is fairly predictable; not that this makes it bad, but simply that if one were to make up his own lyrics to accompany the backing track, odds are good that the melody would be close to what Pollard offers.
That, of course, is where the simplicity ends. Pollard's lyrics are odd, reading like a capsule review of a children's fairy tale: "Under the iron shop, the farewell ladies wink/Always promising, no one to crush them." The chorus, in which he intones again and again, "The queen's prize awaits, she might rub her legs" always puts me in the mind of some giant bug queen, perhaps an ant or a cricket, rubbing her legs together to create music of its own. The bridge seems like a sly aside from Pollard, a comment, perhaps, to his critics: "Currently fabulous, and perhaps at last the song you sing will have meaning."
The song debuted on the 1999 Fading Captain series six-song EP
Ask Them from the side project Lexo and the Leapers. That sounds like an AM radio version compared to the hi-fi reworking the song received two years later on Guided by Voices' second and final stab at the big time,
Isolation Drills. It shows up one more time on the two-CD
Live From Austin, TX that captures the band's 2004 performance for "Austin City Limits." By that time, the song had become a muscular rocker.
Labels: Ask Them, Isolation Drills