Liz Phair - A Sexy Lo-fi Heroine

The captivating Liz Phair is one of the strongest female icons of indie rock in recent decades. Her rageful, sex-obsessed invectives represent the most transgressive face of that songwriter archetype — "half riot girl, half sad girl" — brought to international success by Alanis Morissette and PJ Harvey.

Born in 1967 in New Haven, Connecticut, motherless from virtually infancy, Elizabeth Clark Phair grew up with her adoptive parents: a renowned scientist (John Phair) and an art teacher (Nancy Phair). With them, she moved to Chicago, where, after finishing high school, she studied Art at Oberlin College. It was there that her musical talent emerged right from the start, and combined with her undeniable good looks, it quickly catapulted her into the local underground scene.

A folk-rock singer and guitarist, the young Liz began playing with her partner, guitarist Chris Brokaw. Together they moved to San Francisco, where they started a string of shows and lived for two years in pure bohemian style: a period Phair would later remember as "her lost years." The two eventually went their separate ways, and Liz returned to Chicago, where she got in touch with Urge Overkill, Brad Wood and John Henderson; with them she played various venues and recorded her first demos (the "Girlysound Tapes"), later collected in 1995 on the mini-album Juvenilia.

In 1992 she signed to Matador, and the following year, at just 26, she released her debut album, the double Exile in Guyville (its title taken from an Urge Overkill song, "Goodbye to Guyville"): 18 tracks that immediately showcased her gift for songwriting, her powerful contralto and her outrageous lyrics. A sort of post-feminist answer to the Rolling Stones' "Exile On Main Street", the record casts Liz Phair as the anti-Jagger, ready to respond, song for song, line for line, to the lustful "advances" of the Stones' frontman. Phair sets herself up as a man-eater, calling herself "your blow-job queen" and promising "everything you ever wanted… I'll fuck you 'til your dick is blue" ("Flower"). She thunders and even threatens murder on "Girls! Girls! Girls!". But she also torments herself in obsessive soliloquies: “I can feel it in my bones/ I’m gonna spend another year alone/ It’s fuck and run” ("Fuck And Run"). Co-produced by Brad Wood (known for his work with Smashing Pumpkins and Tortoise), the album is sparse in its arrangements and raw in its themes: it's a no-holds-barred battle of the sexes, played out through scathing invective, obscene propositions and emotional autopsies.

Phair accompanies herself on guitar, crafting chords that Keith Richards might well approve of ("6'1\"", "Mesmerizing"), and sings in a low, sensual register, while Wood and sound engineer Casey Rice handle drums, guitars, bass and organ, conjuring a varied and eccentric sonic universe. Balanced between Bob Dylan-style ballads and Juliana Hatfield-esque folk-pop, the album offers a handful of touching melodies (the tender "Help Me Mary", the piano-driven "Divorce Song"), but also bursts of vibrant rock, from "Never Said" to "Johnny Sunshine", from "Fuck and Run" to "6'1", folk pieces ("Dance of the Seven Veils") and psychedelic excursions ("Gunshy", "Canary"). Rounding out the picture are the intoxicating tremolos of "Explain It to Me", the acoustic whisper of "Glory", and the noisy blues of "Soap Star Joe".

Shifting from dominatrix ("Flower") to victim ("Divorce Song"), from skeptical romantic ("6'1\"") to self-flagellator ("Fuck and Run"), from domestic hostage ("Help Me Mary") to aggressive punk ("Never Said"), Phair mirrors the uncertainty of real life, digging into her own subconscious, her tormented romantic experiences and her insecurities. The album also offers an interesting portrait of Wicker Park, Chicago's bohemian neighborhood.

The second album, Whip-Smart (1994), offers 14 tracks that follow in the footsteps of the debut, helped along by the renewed partnership with producers-engineers Brad Wood and Casey Rice. The single "Supernova", a fusion of glam-rock guitars and sexy lyrics, was met with great favor on indie radio and even on MTV. But there aren't many other standout tracks, and perhaps for this reason critical reception was lukewarm this time around. Still worth noting are the sarcastic narrative of "Soap Star Joe", the heartfelt ode of "Support System" ("What I need is a man of action/I need my attraction to you/Driving me down all those dangerous avenues"), the Pretenders-like vibrations of "Nashville", the dreamy, Beatles-esque "Shane" (which closes with a mantra ordering "You gotta have fear in your heart"…), the melancholic "Easy", and above all "Go West", a journey into the mind of a girl leaving home: "Take off/The parking brake/Go coasting/Into a different state", sings Liz Phair, moving from a delicate falsetto to her trademark contralto over a backdrop of guitars, bass and drums. Less successful, though, are the opening "Chopsticks", which sounds like a Tori Amos piano ballad without her dramatic punch, and the title track, pervaded by an unremarkable calypso vein.

Four years would pass before the follow-up, Whitechocolatespaceegg (1998). In the meantime, Liz Phair's private life had changed completely: in 1995 she married film producer Jim Staskausas, with whom she had a son, Nick, a year later. The record inevitably bears the mark of this transformation, presenting the former riot girl of Exile in Guyville in the guise of a mature songwriter. What improves most is Phair's vocal technique, having honed her contralto to the point of pulling off sudden register changes with ease. The sixteen tracks are all of a good standard, even if the record lacks the sheer force of a "Girls! Girls! Girls!" or the infectious charm of a "Supernova." The autobiographical "Pottymouthed Girl" softens the tone, now rarely "scandalous". Sexual themes are diluted and left between the lines ("Sticks and stones can break my bones/ and boys can make me kick and moan", on the psychedelic "Ride"). The title track pairs traditional guitar accompaniment with some interesting electronic touches, while the chamber-rock of "Perfect World" and the taut country of "Johnny Feelgood" boast airy, sparkling melodies. While "Polyester Bride" leans on catchy pop-song cadences, the tender litany of "Headache" marks a return to the lo-fi sound of her early work. The single "Polyester Bride" is an exquisite pop song, with an intriguing chorus and a curious story, in which the protagonist asks her friend whether she could ever "bother dating unfamous men". "Love Is Nothing" boasts a gripping pop refrain. "Uncle Alvarez" is a third-person confession about family honor and romantic disappointments, while "Go On Ahead" is another soliloquy, dedicated to the difficulties of marriage and motherhood. But perhaps the record's true masterpiece is the melancholic waltz of "Shitloads Of Money", the melodic summation of the whole work, next to which both the grunge grit of the title track and the garage-rock of "Baby Got Going" pale in comparison.

In 1994 Liz Phair had declared: "I want to be one of the rock-girls, I want to represent part of all this". Whitechocolatespaceegg cements her in that very role as a female icon of rock music, while at the same time reshaping its contours. If the "girl-power" anthem of Exile In Guyville was the feminist answer to the Stones' "Main Street", and if Whip Smart was a call to emancipation from macho dogma, Whitechocolatespaceegg charts a personal path of reflection that goes beyond stereotypes and expectations, falling in line with the folk-rock of Carole King and Joni Mitchell, albeit updated to the age of lo-fi.

Liz Phair celebrated the album's success by taking part in the all-female Lilith Fair festival, alongside Suzanne Vega, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow & co.: "For me it was a blessing," she said. "This job is usually detestable, because it means always being surrounded by men and never having any of your own kind around: can a man even imagine working in a place full of women only, from the boss down? So I'm thrilled to be touring with all of them, doing what I do".

Five years later came the self-titled Liz Phair. At 36, by now a mother and with a divorce behind her, our subject hadn't lost her taste for sexual provocation ("Rock Me"), but at least showed a willingness to free herself from certain clichés that no longer fit her, veering toward more classic, polished pop songwriting, as demonstrated eloquently by tracks like "Extraordinary" and "Friend of Mine".

On the whole, however, the record is a damp squib, revealing the deep confusion of a woman who had once wielded the language of rock with such brazen ease.

A crisis that deepens further on the following Somebody's Miracle (2005), where Liz Phair has become a parody of herself. Banal, predictable lyrics, paired with ditties worthy of Avril Lavigne, complete the mess of a record that sounds very much like the swan song of one of the most irreverent rock-girls of the last twenty years. The energy of the single "Everything To Me" isn't enough to prevent a flop as resounding as it was, all things considered, predictable.

Even if her songs haven't always lived up to her ambitions, Liz Phair forged a powerful female rockstar persona, carrying forward the pioneering work of other nonconformist rock heroines, from Chrissie Hynde to Holly Vincent, from Joan Jett to Nina Hagen, from Madonna to Kim Gordon. And it's hard, for instance, to imagine Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" without a forerunner like Exile in Guyville.

Liz Phair returns eleven years after Funstyle (Rocket Science, 2010). Soberish opens (too) lightly with "Spanish Door" and "The Game", setting the tone for a soft, melodic acoustic indie pop-rock that clothes lyrics that are anything but calm ("What's inside that heavy head? / Are you on the junk again?"), with a few rockier flashes ("Hey Lou" and "Soberish"):

The album still offers a few precious tracks that redeem the whole, like the pop-tune “In There,” driven by handclap beats, and the ballads “Sheridan Road” and “Lonely Street.” There's also no missing a series of details that make seemingly simpler songs interesting, like the chamber-pop of “Ba Ba Ba” and the Lanegan-esque grunge swagger of “Soul Sucker.”

Liz Phair's new challenge, she who was already an “exile in Guyville” at her debut, is aging. Ageing is one of the current themes in American indie pop-rock, also explored - especially on the female side - by Sleater-Kinney.

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