Liz Phair, Putting the R Back in Rock
Tuesday, April 6, 2004; Page C08
Washington Post
In the 11 years since her Hustler-smutty debut, "Exile in Guyville," former indie-rocker Liz Phair has become a wife, a mother, a divorcee and, on her curiously teen-poppy new album, Hilary Duff's jealous big sister. But as a sold-out 9:30 club discovered Sunday, one thing hasn't changed: As a live performer, she's still a living, breathing parental-advisory sticker in a low-cut blouse.
Wearing a Britneyesque headset that allowed for plenty of over-amplified heavy breathing -- and rubbing her midriff when she wasn't awkwardly strumming her guitar -- the 36-year-old Chicago native with the bouncy blond locks and precarious decolletage vamped through a 90-minute, 23-song set. Along the way, she sloppily yet winningly proved, as the new song "Extraordinary" says, that she's "just your ordinary, average, everyday, sane, psycho super-goddess."
Phair has taken guff lately for supposedly betraying her gritty singer-songwriter roots by working with Avril Lavigne's writing team, the Matrix. But clean or explicit, electric or acoustic, she's always had a way with a rocking good hook. On Sunday, the only difference between current glossy hits "Why Can't I?" and "Extraordinary" (currently being used by ESPN to promote women's college hoops) and the previous decade's tawdry tell-alls "Supernova" and "Flower" (currently being used as inspiration for Penthouse Forum letters) were shinier choruses and varying degrees of carnal knowledge.
Phair's little-girl voice remains a tricky treat, soft and wobbly enough to sound vulnerable (on "Chopsticks" and "Never Said") but hard and confident when she needed to soar above the often overwrought four-piece backing band (on "Rock Me" and "Red Light Fever"). And the female-empowerment champ sure hasn't lost her talent for making people squirm as they sing along. An extended encore -- with the house lights up, no less -- included her filthy one-night-stand anthem with the very unprintable title and the show closer "H.W.C." about, well, very unprintable stuff. You won't hear that on Nickelodeon.
-- Sean Daly
