The Disparity Of An Adult Singing Like A Teenager: Liz Phair!

The Good: Some wonderful pop-rock tracks with decent lyrics, Occasional vocals
The Bad: Some deathly repetitive tracks, Some real lame lines and rhymes
The Basics: A decent, but not extraordinary, album, Liz Phair satisfies more than it disappoints.


My experiences with Liz Phair's music culminates now with the album that first attracted me to her music. I know, it's pretty sad whenever anyone is drawn to an artist by their most commercially successful single, but when I heard Liz Phair's upbeat-sounding pop-rock tune "Why Can't I?" on the radio back in 2003, I was impressed. It took me a couple of years to getting around to her eponymous album, but now I have. No longer mumbling (my main complaint with Liz Phair's debut Exile In Guyville, reviewed here!), Phair continues in the style I observed she had with Whip-Smart (reviewed here!). In those earlier reviews, I noted that her loyal fans seemed to object to Liz Phair because it had gone too "pop," though I thought she was already there from the beginning.

With fourteen tracks, clocking in at 50 minutes, Liz Phair is a pop-rock album that continued Phair's obsession with presenting herself as a far younger artist. I say this not because she sings a comparison between a lover and her underwear, but because her lyrics - and some of her especially bubblegum vocals - present a rather juvenile persona. Phair does not write and sing about love, but she does present songs that openly reference sex. The juvenile aspect comes in the views on sex and sexuality; it's all "fucking," which is also why the album has the stupid Parental Advisory sticker.

Phair, in her mid-30s is trying to pass herself off as someone much younger and that aspect of the album feels cheap. Instead of having themes that celebrate her adult sexuality, her songs wander from meaningless sexual experience to another. This album features songs that deal with infidelity ("Why Can't I?"), enticement ("Take A Look"), the joys of enthusiastic sex with a younger lover ("Rock Me") and the comfort of an actual relationship ("Favorite").

Conversely, anyone who can make an upbeat anthem celebrating hot, white cum ("H.W.C.") as a beauty regimen, can't be too bad.

And Liz Phair is not bad, she's just not the extraordinary artist I had eagerly anticipated three albums ago. Songs on Liz Phair vary in quality from the distinctly original - "H.W.C." definitely applies, as does "My Bionic Eyes" - to the terribly repetitive, which "Take A Look" takes the cake for.

This album, while it is pop-rock has a number of tracks that are definitely more in the rock and roll range of that spectrum. The electric guitars on "My Bionic Eyes" are classic in their sound and intensity. Similarly, the guitars that open "Extraordinary" (and the album) are very much rock and roll, especially the way Liz Phair accompanies them with her wailing wall of sound voice for the track. Phair uses a decent mix of rock and roll guitars and the more pop-oriented keyboards, but the overall listening experience of this album is both diverse (track to track) and cohesive (it all sounds like it belongs together).

Some of the music is somewhat derivative. For example, "Good Love Never Dies" opens sounding like the classic rock song "Everything I Own" by Bread. Some of the others have instrumentals that have a nagging familiar quality to them, including "H.W.C." For the most part, though, this album succeeds in sounding unlike anything else currently on the market.

For those unfamiliar with Liz Phair, this is a very accessible album to get into her sound. Phair is a pop-rock artist who writes her own songs (all fourteen tracks are written or co-written by Phair) and she plays guitar on "It's Sweet." She had the most commercial success of her career thus far with her mainstream-friendly single "Why Can't I?" As well, she provided backing vocals on Sheryl Crow's hit "Soak Up The Sun." Phair is like Sheryl Crow both vocally and musically, though her lyrics tend to be less mature and more explicit.

The thing is, listening to this album years after it was made, the singles are pretty obvious. "Why Can't I?" and "Extraordinary" stand out as the best, generally safest tracks that showcase Phair's talents and style. So, while "Little Digger" presents actual growth for Phair, it doesn't sound like a song that could chart or represent her. And it's not that the two songs that charted are bad songs. Indeed, I like "Extraordinary" and I think there are too few songs that honestly express their singer as "I am just your ordinary, average, everyday, sane/psycho super-goddess."

While her lyrics might have moments when she sounds like a less mature talent (the rhymes on "Red Light Fever" - nowhere/somewhere, car/are, red/head, etc. - sound like they could have been written by Avril Lavigne), they are generally better than the garbage that populates the Top 40 charts. After the years of waiting, at the very least this was a fun album to listen to. Perhaps that's enough.

The best track is "My Bionic Eyes," the weak link is the highly repetitive "Take A Look."

For other works by former Artist Of The Month artists, please check out my reviews of:
Break Every Rule - Tina Turner
Femme Fatale - Britney Spears
The Collection - Alanis Morissette

5.5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page where my reviews are organized from best to worst!

© 2013, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Whipped Into Coherency, If Not Success: Whip-Smart By Liz Phair!

The Good: Vocals are more understandable than debut, Moments of lyrics and music
The Bad: Annoyingly repetitive, Maintains juvenile sound, Short
The Basics: With emotionally disconnected lyrics obsessed with sex as the sole function of relationships (no love here!), Liz Phair's concept album falls flat.


I'm nearing the bottom of my cache of c.d.s and as I await my new fix for the week (of music and videos), I find myself spinning Liz Phair's second album, Whip-Smart. Having just heard and reviewed Phair's debut, Exile In Guyville, (reviewed here!), Whip-Smart surprised me for how it fixed the most serious problems of the debut, but deepened other faults. The result is that Whip-Smart is overall a weaker album than Exile In Guyville.

Liz Phair, for those unfamiliar with her works, is a pop-rock singer-songwriter who is known for sexually frank or explicit lyrics, and from her radio-friendly hit in 2003 "Why Can't I?" She is essentially a pop-rock artist who seems to be singled out because she is a female artist who almost exclusively refers to sex as "fucking." She's been hailed as a rock spectacle or grrrl goddess, but I don't see it. She's much more pop than most of her critics credit her with being.

Whip-Smart is a fourteen-track pop-rock album that presents a more coherent musical artist than Phair's debut. Simply put, while Phair's vocals were distinct on Exile In Guyville for being almost completely incoherent - she mumbled through the album - Whip-Smart is refreshingly clear and direct. The vocals are almost completely understandable and that makes listening to Whip-Smart very easy.

Whip-Smart is a concept album charting the rise and fall of a relationship and it works when one listens to the album. There is a very natural progression from ending the prior relationship (opening song "Chopsticks") to finding a new attraction ("Supernova"), developing a new relationship ("X-Ray Man" and "Shane") and it falling apart ("Cinco De Mayo" and "Jealousy"). I like concept albums and the thematic evolution from beginning to end is one of the few strengths of Whip-Smart.

The problem here is that the execution of the concept is not as strong as the concept itself because Phair creates the album using lyrics that are mediocre, average, repetitive and using the same language as her debut. So, while I commend Phair for not being an artist who throws the word "love" around, the fact that in fourteen tracks, "love" comes up in one song. Phair sings "I won't decorate my love" over and over in "Nashville," but none of the songs ever broach the concept of the relationship the album's protagonist searching for love. Instead, this is more an album about someone hooking up, rather than truly relating or looking for anything emotional in a partner.

For those curious, on this album where "love" comes up as an accessory on one track, "f*ck" is used on three tracks, twice for sex, once as a curse. The songs lack impact for an adult audience because of the disconnect between love and sex. The reconciliation most adults make with the lyrics is that Phair is presenting a rather young, immature vision of relationships. In short, this is not music that's terribly appealing to those who have the goal of establishing and maintaining a long-term, loving relationship. Whip-Smart might reflect the reality of the search, but because none of the songs indicate any strong desire for love, the disconnect is very real and unsettling.

Perhaps as problematic is the repetitive nature of so many of the songs on Whip-Smart. Exile In Guyville had a repetition problem, which seems to have gotten worse on this album, possibly because there are fewer tracks. So, for example, on the track Whip-Smart, the refrain "When they do the double dutch, that's them dancing" is repeated TWENTY-ONE times over the course of the song, becoming hypnotic and monotonous.

The only track that truly worked with lyrics and music is Liz Phair's "Jealousy." Unlike Natalie Merchant's pop-version song by the same title (she had an acoustic version originally that was haunting and brilliant), Phair's "Jealousy" is harsh and angry as she cries out, "I know it's just a drawer of photographs / They're ex-girlfriends, I try to remember that / I don't wanna look, but I'm already hooked on jealousy . . ." She perfectly captures the heat of the emotion in the song, making it a worthwhile listen.

Otherwise, Phair has not progressed much from her first album musically. Just as her lyrics are still sounding like a teenage persona, her music is equally undeveloped. The songs are mostly pop, like Whip-Smart which is surprisingly sugary for an artist who uses "fuck" so much. Most of the songs are upbeat, pop-rock tracks that that Phair presents with her vocals accompanied by guitar or piano (which she plays) and/or synth, drums, bass and other background percussion and vocals. Given the reviews that declare Phair such a strong rocker, it's surprising how distinctly pop some of her songs, like "Supernova" actually are.

Despite the melodic refrain to such songs as Whip-Smart, much of the album is nondescript instrumentally, with weak music backing up droning vocals. Two great examples of this are the opening track "Chopsticks" (which has clear vocals, but for the life of me I couldn't hum you three bars, even after listening to the album six times) and "Alice Springs" which is just a murky musical movement that failed to impress me either musically or vocally.

The album ends with the somewhat pleading sound of "May Queen," which closes the album on an up-tempo sound, but with little additional content value. In all, "Whip Smart" is an album that has the feel of being churned out (this was released a year after her debut) with little growth and the only value above Exile In Guyville I see in it is that one may understand Phair's lyrics better.

Still, this leaves me disappointed with Phair. She's not as badass as early Alanis Morissette, she's not as emotive as Heather Nova, nor as artistic and initially talented as Sophie B. Hawkins. But, I suppose she fills the niche for female artists that use "fuck" and view sex as an act or activity rather than something with meaning and depth. Sigh. We can do without that.

The best song is "Jealousy," the worst track is the unmemorable "Crater Lake."

For other works by former Artist Of The Month artists, please visit my reviews of:
Jackie’s Strength (Single) – Tori Amos
Any Day Now - Joan Baez
MTV Unplugged - 10,000 Maniacs

5.5/10

For other music reviews, check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Mumbling Near Excellence: Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville (My New Artist Of The Month!)

The Good: Good lyrics, Some very good tunes, Emotionally relevant
The Bad: Low-key vocals hard to discern at some points
The Basics: More pop-rock than rock and roll, Liz Phair's debut - Exile In Guyville ranks high for artistry, though I was not impressed by the lack of emotional resonance and often understated vocals.


Before I started listening to Liz Phair, all I truly new about her and her musical work was that I couldn't find where she appeared on Sheryl Crow's Greatest Hits (she does backing vocals on the hit song "Soak Up The Sun"), I heard and liked her radio-friendly hit "Why Can't I" a few years ago, and that on her debut album Exile In Guyville, one of her songs had the much cited lyric "I'll fuck you 'til your dick is blue" ("Flower"). This line from "Flower" was cited in reviews I read back in high school that were illustrating that Liz Phair was presenting hard-core, direct lyrics and in reviews for her follow-up albums, it seemed to be the line that was always cited to recapture the notion of Liz Phair expressing something deeply honest or woman-empowering. So, the truth is, when I sat down to listen to Exile In Guyville, I was expecting something a lot harder edged than what the artist actually presented.

So, for those who are not familiar with Liz Phair, this review will offer you a very pure understanding of who Liz Phair is, via her music, on her major label debut, Exile In Guyville. Liz Phair is not Sheryl Crow, but she might as well be. While I was anticipating something much heavier - musically and thematically - than what Exile In Guyville actually is, Liz Phair is essentially a pop-rock artist whose next of kin seems to be Sheryl Crow. While Crow is five year's Phair's senior, both made their major label debut in 1993 and the fundamental difference between Phair and Crow is that while Crow's musical performance insinuates an "aww, shucks, I'm a rock star" attitude, Phair's musical persona is more "I'm gonna mumble out some rock and roll, I hope you like it, check mike, here goes." If Crow's underpinning is an exuberant country girl, Phair's roots seem to be presented as mellow, kinda-grungy moody lone girl rocking through the world. Phair's song "Stratford-On-Guy" sounds almost exactly like Sheryl Crow.

The Crow-Phair comparison I'm making is to give a crystal clear example of who Phair sounds like musically. It's an interesting sidenote of career parallelism; had Tuesday Night Music Club (reviewed here!) not had the upbeat radio hit "All I Wanna Do," perhaps Crow would have had as commercially a difficult time as Phair. But essentially, Phair and Crow are producing similar music at the stage their debuts were released.

On Exile In Guyville, Liz Phair sings in mumbling tones about sex, love and coming-of-age. She does it with such an effective voice and presentation that I was astonished to learn that Phair was in her mid-twenties when the album was released. My surprise over her age comes from the lyrics, which paint her as younger, with desperately pleading "I want a boyfriend" ("Fuck and Run") and referencing number two pencils ("Canary"). These - among others - created a persona that seemed more high school age than post-college.

Liz Phair wrote the lyrics and music for all eighteen tracks on Exile In Guyville and she co-produced the album, which is a good sign as far as I'm concerned. This establishes Phair instantly as a serious artist, concerned with crafting her image and art on her own. In addition to providing the lead vocals for her poems, she plays guitar and piano on the album, making her integral at every level of producing her sound, image and artistic work. The result is something that sound very authentic and generally individual. This is her voice, as in statement, being presented and it is generally presented well.

Phair's lyrics oscillate between strongly individual and expressive and desperately repetitive. The latter note is based on the fact that at seconds over 55 minutes, Exile In Guyville's eighteen songs average under three minutes and most are heavily repetitive. "Never Said," opens with the line "I never said nothing" and repeats the line seventeen times, which is a lot for a 3:16 song, especially when that line contains notes that are held. The hyperbole of this might well be "Gunshy," where the title word is repeated 18 times in the 3:15 song.

Better than the repetitive quality is the unique quality that presents Liz Phair as a young woman with something to say. The thing is, given how much positive press and the reviews that declared Phair a strong rock and roll presence, I was surprised how "pop" Phair is on Exile In Guyville. I recall reading reviews by disappointed fans when 2003's "Liz Phair" was released for how it was a pop album and I'm surprised because Exile In Guyville is strongly pop-rock. Songs like "Mesmerizing" include jingle-like refrains with pop-rock guitars and the faux clapping sound (ironically sounding a lot like Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" or her later "A Change Will Do You Good"). This is a very pop album.

But let's return to that classic line from "Flower." I suspect that Phair has been declared a hard rock woman because of such titles as "Fuck and Run" and because the lyrical directness of songs like "Flower." The thing is, the context of every professional review of Liz Phair's works that cited "Flower," seemed to indicate that Phair was a sexually-frank, self-empowered woman and the thing is, I didn't hear that. On "Flower," she melodically, hypnotically lists the carnal acts she is prepared to do. To wit, she sings, "Every time I see your face / I think of things unpure unchaste / I want to fuck you like a dog / I'll take you home and make you like it . . . I'll f*ck you and your minions too . . ." It's not sexually empowering, it's not romantic, it's barely sexual; as sung, Phair presents herself in this song as a sexual drone, ready to put out with such extreme frequency as to, well, ". . . fuck you 'til your dick is blue." It's more explicit than Britney Spears' "Slave 4 You," but it has about the same amount of passion and disregard for anything meaningful.

My point here is that there's a difference between being sexually explicit and sexually empowered. I see empowerment as being in control of one's own body and I think the healthy empowerment in this regard is the determination to find meaning and sexual definition on one's own terms. For me, that involves some search for emotional gratification through the sex act. Without that, it's just a list of positions and, well, acts. It's just sex. And Phair's portrayal is explicit, but she could as easily be singing about life on the streets as a woman obsessing over a boy. "Flower" is not passionate, it's barely intriguing after the first listen.

It's also barely decipherable. Presented as a two-part rock hymn, "Flower" has an upper register refrain that is repeated combined with a lower register vocal presentation that ultimately creates a song that is somewhat hard to hear. Especially because Phair mumbles through the vocals. This is professionally called low-fi sound (low-fidelity), but it boils down to having to work to figure out what Phair is saying on a lot of tracks.

And the question is, is it worth the effort to decipher Phair's lyrics? It was "Shatter" - the longest track on the album - that finally sold me on the effort. On "Shatter," Phair seems most honest about the persona she's presenting on the album when she recognizes the consequences of the promiscuity and desire she articulates, when she sings, ". . . something about just being with you / Slapped me right in the face / Nearly broke me in two / It's a mark / I've taken hard / And I know I will carry with me for a long long time." It's the most emotionally connected Phair gets to her audience and I liked that.

Otherwise, this is an album about a young woman coming of age and there's no real love, just sex. And I like the sound, it's a solid album, but the content is nowhere near as deep as I had thought it would be. So, where Heather Nova's debut album Glowstars (reviewed here!) resonated with me for its emotional honesty and impressed me with the poetics of how connected Nova was to her emotional core, I felt none of that with Phair. I was impressed by her musical diversity; within the confines of a pop-rock album, Exile In Guyville has a nice mix of tempos, instrumental sounds and styles that feels more experimental and creative than sloppy and lacking direction.

If you're looking for a pop-rock album with direct, sexually explicit lyrics, Exile In Guyville is definitely a good choice. But it's not an empowering album and Liz Phair is not a hard rocking woman, but instead a somewhat low-key pop-rock artist who never got the radio airplay of Sheryl Crow.

As an irony, on the song "Fuck and Run," Phair mumbles the refrain in such a way that my first listen - admittedly politically biased - sounded like "fuck Enron." How timely! :)

I enjoyed the consequences of relationships song "Divorce Song" most over my repeated listens, "Stratford-On-Guy" left the least impression on me.

For other, former, Artist Of The Month, selections, please check out my reviews of:
The Road Less Traveled: Greatest Hits - Melissa Etheridge
The Best Of Janis Ian - Janis Ian
Beginnings - Shania Twain

6.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Astonishing Moments In Musical Production Decisions: Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits

The Good: Some fun, memorable tracks
The Bad: Repetitive sound, Nothing deep in lyrics or music
The Basics: With songs that range from the obscure to the lame with little that is of any quality or actual nostalgic value, Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits is not worth your time.


So I've been seeking out new (to me) musical artists a lot lately. One of the artists I have been interested in hearing works from is Liz Phair. I'm told I'll like her. So when my first search for Phair came up with Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits as the first title in a search for Liz Phair, I was both disturbed and intrigued.

Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits is just what it might sound like. It is a collection of theme songs and other music from cartoons that used to air on Saturday morning. There are nineteen tracks, each by a different musical artist who was willing to sell his or her soul to be a part of this shameless commercial venture. That's not to say that Liz Phair's greatest ambition was probably not to sing "The Tra La La La Song (One Banana, Tow Banana)" from "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour," but this is just a waste of time and money and I'm somewhat insulted to be writing about it. You ought to feel somewhat insulted that you're wasting a portion of your life on this earth reading this review.

Here's the thing, I can understand that there might be a niche market that is looking to be filled with music from Saturday morning cartoons. Sure, they can bring back wonderful childhood memories of watching television. But the thing about the concept of the album is incongruent with the execution of it. I can understand wanting a stupid nostalgic moment (though I can't see one listening to this over and over again without going insane), but this album does not capture that. Instead, it is more accurately "A Tribute To Saturday Morning Cartoons." These are not the original recordings, they sound different, they are not going to bring back that "Wow, that triggers that" type reaction.

The tracks range from the gospel-lyricked "Open Up Your Heart and Let The Sun Shine In" to simple, blatant commercial tracks advertising the show like "Spider-Man" or "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" So, the resulting album has no cohesion in terms of theme or quality. So much depends on the quality of the original.

What does unify the album is the sound. Listening to Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits it occurs to the listener what simple creatures children are. The techniques used to lure them in to watching the shows through musical cues are almost identical. It's a lot of fast-strumming guitars, a lot of heavy drums. So, the Violent Femmes's cover of "Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah (Means I Love You)" has very little musical distinction from the Ramones performing "Spider-Man." This gives the album an instantly repetitive feel to it.

So, who might find anything of merit in Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits? I suppose if you're a completist for any of the artists who contributed to it, you might like to hear their take on a song from Saturday Morning Cartoons. The artists who have tracks on the album are: Liz Phair (with Material Issue), Sponge, Mary Lou Lord (with Semisonic), Matthew Sweet, Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donelly, Collective Soul, Butthole Surfers, Helmet, Reverend Horton Heat, Frente!, Violent Femmes, Dig, face to face, Tripping Daisy, Toadies, Sublime, The Murmers and Wax. Equally, the disc might appeal to those who like the following Saturday morning cartoons: The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, Speed Racer, The Archie Show, Scooby-Doo, Josie And the Pussycats, The Bugaloos, Underdog, Gigantor, Spider-Man, Dastardly and Muttley In Their Flying Machines, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Popeye, Sigmund and the Seamonsters, The Groovie Goolies, Hong Kong Phooey, H.R. Pufnstuf, and The Ren and Stimpy Show.

If you're looking for something of musical quality or even enduring entertainment value, this will fall short. Drastically.

On a side note, the saddest thing about this musical endeavor might be that while this album was produced and released there were legitimate artists denied a place in the marketplace for works of value. Sigh.

The best track is Frente!'s "Open Up Your Heart and Let The Sun Shine In" which has some actual musical value, the weakest of the otherwise weak tracks is "Gigantor" by Helmet, which is just obscure. For something conceptually similar with greater entertainment value, check out Songs In The Key of Springfield, reviewed here.

For other esoteric compilation albums, please check out my reviews of:
Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Music Of Pete Seeger
The Castaway Strings Play The Music Of Elvis Presley
Millennium '80's New Wave Party

2/10

Check out how this album stacks up against others by visiting my Music Review Index Page where the albums are ranked from best to worst!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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