Idolator: Liz Phair

Liz Phair Reissue Is Leaving Me In Exile In Think-Pieceville

Maura Johnston — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:45:00 EDT

A note to Guardian music blogger Priya Elan, who spends a bunch of paragraphs and a bunch of links concluding that Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville has been "forgotten": Darling, "forgotten" albums don't get reissued with lots of attendant press, celebratory concerts, etc., etc. "Forgotten" albums are the ones that you find crammed into the 99-cent bin at the Princeton Record Exchange because they've been left to die.

I mean, I loved Guyville and think Phair's other two pre-Matrix albums are pretty underrated because of her debut's outsized stature, and I'm sure glad that talk of the album is at least serving as something of a Katy Perry corrective as far as "women in music" are concerned. But every time I read a "think piece" pegged to Phair these days I want to claw my eyes out at the simplistic theorizing within, none of which has even attempted to grapple with the fact that 1993, for better or for worse, is not 2008, and that simply saying "women are awesome, yay!" or "sexism is bad, boo!" doesn't really even scratch the surface of the surface of the problems with music and gender in the current era, which we've gone into in some detail before.

The Phair sex war (repeated) [Guardian]

Liz Phair To Perform Exile In Guyville In Its Entirety

Anthony Miccio — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

This "plays whole album live" is a pretty smooth way to get around the "how can we miss you if you've never gone away?" problem has-beens face. When a group like Public Enemy says they're going to play It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, it's as if the group had broken up soon after its recording, thus never having to admit they recorded There's A Poison Goin' On. Liz Phair will join this exclusive club of veterans revisiting former glories when she performs Exile In Guyville solo and acoustic at New York's Hiro Ballroom on June 25, and at to-be-announced shows in Chicago and San Francisco.

The DVD included on the Guyville reissue that these shows are accompanying will feature Phair-conducted interviews with Brad Wood, Urge Overkill, Steve Albini, John Cusack ("who
founded the Chicago avant-garde theater group New Crime Productions"? Oh, that John Cusack!), and numerous other guys from Guyville. Her next album is planned for the fall, so it won't be too long before we see how this self-reflection has influenced her work.

Liz Phair Hasn't Felt Creative In 15 Years

Anthony Miccio — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:45:00 EDT

Did you know Liz Phair never wanted to be on a major label? That Matador "left" her at Capitol and her infamous self-titled 2003 album (which is pretty good, BTW) was her attempt to "make the best of it"? Now that she's on Dave Matthews' label ATO she feels more "creative" than she has since, well, Exile In Guyville. "I can honestly say, for the first time in 15 years, I feel creative. I don't have to start with a mindset that thinks about how to sell the record and works backward." So she didn't even feel "creative" for Whip-Smart or Whitechocolatespaceegg? Who names an album Whitechocolatespaceegg and doesn't feel "creative"?

She's got plenty to be excited about now, though. Like the upcoming reissue of the one album she felt creative on!

I'm also excited about the way the re-release turned out. Alan Light did the liner notes, and I've been meeting with artists about the packaging for the 2.0 version. There are three bonus tracks, but there is a good minute separating them from the rest of the record. It was cool to go through my closet and find the songs — some are from [demo] "Girly Sound" but they are very much of the "Guyville" era.

Ooh, liner notes by Alan Light! To go with the DVD introduced by Dave Matthews himself! Now there's a reason to skip Itunes. While I tried to be classy and not put the word "blowjob" in the headline, I couldn't leave the phrase out entirely.

Fifteen years ago, things seemed a lot more male-dominated, and now you get women busting out everywhere, so that's good. But the way they are busting out is still very much within the constraints of what men want them to do. Maybe we don't need to have as much anger as we did back then, but we still need strong women. I see all these young women on porn sites, all these sorority girls posting pictures of themselves giving blowjobs and thinking that it's empowering, and I feel like they really missed the point.

And how could anyone miss the point of "H.W.C."? I'm curious to hear the outcome of her newfound independence (her only album I don't think highly of is the quickly forgotten Somebody's Miracle), but it sounds like she's still suffering from Sheryl Crow exposure and whatever awkward past-rationalizing ailment bands like R.E.M. have.

The Billboard Q&A: Liz Phair [Billboard]

Liz Phair Reviews Dean Wareham's Memoir, Reaffirms "Blowjob Queen" Status

Anthony Miccio — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:30:00 EDT

Dean Wareham's Black Postcards is a very readable memoir that may ironically accrue a larger audience than his bands Galaxie 500 and Luna, whose careers the book chronicles. It's both touching and amusing, but one thing I didn't find it was melodramatic, possibly because I kept hearing the words spoken lackadaisically over Velvets-like guitar. Not so for Liz Phair, who hypes the rock'n'roll angle pretty strongly in her NYT book ~~report~~ review, opening with a late-'80s Queen lyric and focusing on more rough-and-tumble than you'd expect in a piece about an indie rocker with "an elective reading list to rival Art Garfunkel's."

Freddie Mercury once said, "I want it all and I want it now." This appetite might aptly be called the rock 'n' roll disease, and Dean Wareham seems to have caught it. Or is in recovery. Or is somewhere along the road...

He portrays himself as a surprisingly unsympathetic character. He visits a prostitute. He makes people angry. He follows girls home after the show. He snorts coke. No apologies are made because this is, after all, a rock 'n' roll autobiography. Late nights, a lot of drugs, a little infidelity (well, maybe not just a little, but I won't give away the ending) — that's par for the course, right?

...Even his writing style has a rhythm to it: passages move rapidly back and forth between incident and impression, creating a kind of (I'm not kidding) rock 'n' roll.

Phair fans know she's always found Wareham pretty glamorous, though.

Frontman [NYT]
Liz Phair - Stratford-on-Guy [Youtube]
[Photo: WENN]

The Year In Dropped Artists: Hold On To Your Amerie Imports

mjohnston — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 10:35:05 EST

As a sort of companion piece to the news that Taylor Hicks and Ruben Studdard had been dropped from J, Entertainment Weekly's Hollywood Insider blog ran a list of acts that had been dropped by/defected from major labels in 2007 last week. Frankly, I'm surprised that it isn't about a mile longer, even though it does run the gamut from on-to-better-things artists (the White Stripes, Radiohead) to bands that seem to have hard luck follow them wherever they go (Mooney Suzuki, Blood Brothers). Full list after the jump.

THE GOOD: This is a pretty depressing list overall, but perhaps Liz Phair getting dropped by her label will make her think twice before recording her next ode to getting down with the Kotaku set, "Mii And You (Pushin' My Trigger Button)."
THE BAD: After all that will-it-or-won't-it-come-out? drama, it looks like Amerie has been dropped from Sony, thus leaving the status of Because I Love It's US release date more unknown than ever. Here's hoping she'll make a second mix tape.
THE WHAAA? It's not about the list per se, but the comment section of the EW post has turned into a kinda crazy-ass pissing match between JC Chasez fans and Bo Bice diehards. I mean I loved "Until Yesterday" probably more than anyone else, but really?

Airbourne
Alexz Johnson
Alkaline Trio
Amerie
And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead...
Annie Steela
Ari Hest
Aslyn
Big Pooh and Little Brother
Blood Brothers
Bo Bice
Brendan James
Brett Ryan
Christian Daniel
Christina Milian
CMurder
Dandy Warhols
DMX
Fischerspooner
From First To Last
Goldie
Hedley
IMA Robot
INXS
JC Chasez
Jewel
J-Kwon
Joe Budden
Kelis
Kevin Devine
King Elementary
Liz Phair
Melissa Auf der Mar
Men, Women and Children
Moby
Mooney Suzuki
Natalie Warner
Nine Inch Nails
Northern State
Otep
Over It
P.O.D.
Paris Hilton
Paul McCartney
Phase 9
Prophet Omega
Radiohead
Reeve Oliver
Ronnie Day
Ruben Studdard
Shaggy
Shout Out Louds
Skye Sweetnam
Sound Team
Sparklehorse
Stacie Orrico
Sugarcult
Summer Obsession
The Clipse
The Donnas
The Music
The Outline
The Redwalls
The Vines
What About Frank
White Stripes

All the acts that lost major label deals in 2007 [Hollywood Insider]

In Brief: Potentially (Really) Wonky Collaboration Ideas

jharv — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:54:03 EDT

The Black Keys, the blues-rock/country-punk/hyphenated-something duo from Ohio, have agreed to let Danger Mouse ride the faders on their 2008 album. Well, he may have finally found a group (other than Sparklehorse) whose fidelity choices might fit the muted sketches and scribbles that he's now a beloved pop phenomenon for, but I bet the drums still sound like damp feathers slapping together. Meanwhile, the Killers were conveniently in the studio with Lou Reed at precisely the moment MTV came calling for an interview. Perhaps this means Lou will now grow a weasely little moustache and/or develop a penchant for ugly cowboy togs and Brandon will take up tai chi and/or develop a penchant for heroin? Both of 'em already have a history of combative, incomprehensible interviews, at least.

Danger Mouse Joins Forces With Black Keys [NME]
Killers Talk About Two New LPs, Duet With Loud Reed [MTV]

The Case Of Liz Phair's Disappearing Career

mjohnston — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:30:28 EDT

A question posed to us by a friend last night: Sixteen years ago, if a friend had asked you, "What do you think Liz Phair will be up to in 2007?" would you thought to have answered "Writing songs from the perspective of Nancy Drew about feeling alienated in the school cafeteria for a teen movie?" If you answered "yes," then pat yourself on the back and let us know whether or not Lily Allen will be scoring Teletubbies episodes come 2033. But if you're slightly confused, please head to the MySpace page for the Nancy Drew soundtrack and take a listen to the 30-second clip of "Perfect Misfit," Phair's first new song since Somebody's Miracle. Yeah, we know it's only a snippet, but the lyrics alone are really making it tougher and tougher for us to keep defending Whitechocolatespaceegg to anyone.

Nancy Drew Soundtrack [MySpace]

Stuck On Repeat: Cracking Liz Phair's "Whitechocolatespaceegg"

mjohnston — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 16:05:09 EST

We seem to remember Liz Phair's third album, whitechocolatespacegg, getting middling reviews when it was released, but all of the old writeups we're finding online have been positive—either critics decided to revise their impressions after suffering through "Rock Me" a few times, or our youth made us get a little too sensitive about our affections for an album that was solidly jammed in our CD player for approximately 28 months. Either way, we've returned to it recently, and with our newfound maturity (wait, why are you laughing?) comes an appreciation for these three tracks in particular:

~~Liz Phair - Big Tall Man~~ [MP3, link expired]
~~Liz Phair - Ride~~ [MP3, link expired]
~~Liz Phair - What Makes You Happy~~ [MP3, link expired]

"Hey, It's Enrico Palazzo!": Take These Singers Out Of The Ballgame--Please

mjohnston — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 11:15:07 EDT

Ah, October baseball; we love its crispness and high stakes, especially when the right teams are fighting their way to the top. But a good game can be tainted by its attendant musical performances—those requisite patriotism-stoking warbles of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Bless America"—if the wrong singer is asked to step in.

In recent years, most haven't been as outwardly sucky as they've been sort of "eh." However, there have been a few completely jaw-dropping performances of recent vintage, and after the jump, we'll look back at five of them—the inaugural inductees in our "Hey, It's Enrico Palazzo!" Hall of Fame, named for the opera singer who Leslie Nielsen impersonated in The Naked Gun. Tune in later this week as we look for 2006 playoff-season singers to add to this exalted list, and feel free to suggest other Hall of Fame candidates in comments.

Michael Bolton ("The Star-Spangled Banner," 2003 American League Championship Series, Game 4): It's not Bolton's proto-yarl that garnered him the top spot on this list. No, it's the fact that, after he forgot the words, he not-so-discreetly tried to peek at his palm, where he'd apparently decided to write down the national anthem's lyrics in teeny letters.

Steven Tyler ("The Star-Spangled Banner," 2004 World Series, Game 1): Tyler's rendition opens with a presumably "classy" harmonica break and stumbles through a lyric or two, but it's the "Dude Looks Like A Lady"-esque screamy breakdown on the anthem's climactic "land of the free" line that really takes this to the lousy level.

Liz Phair ("God Bless America," 2005 World Series, Game 1): To someone, this pairing must have made sense; Game 1 was in Chicago, Phair's hometown, and she's spoken about her love of the National Anthem before. But when Phair trills about America being the land that she loves, you wonder if she's waxing poetic about patriotism ... or if she's working out some long-dormant Sapphic urges.

Scott Stapp("God Bless America," 2004 World Series, Game 4): Is it the punctuating breaths? The fact that he seems to have forgotten how to pronounce the "ve" sound in "love"? His introduction as "the voice of Creed"? Or is it just that he's Scott Stapp, and even when he's not inflicting his lyrical Jesus complex on the world, he's still flat and completely insufferable?

Jimmy Buffett ("Take Me Out To The Ballgame," 2003 NLCS, Game 1): This is what happens when you're wasting away in Margaritaville and the organist is trapped in Wrigley Field's friendly confines.

[Graphic courtesy enrico-palazzo.de]