I have finally listened to the new Liz Phair album, which she released herself over Fourth of July weekend via her website.
Don’t know who Liz Phair is? What you might recognize will be two singles from her 2003 album, “Liz Phair”:
Essential Liz Phair:
At her peak, her music was brash, unfiltered, gritty, angsty and totally stream-of-conscious. She was Joan Jett, Rickie Lee Jones, Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco and Kim Gordon.
But then she did what so many musicians (and other humans) do: get married, have kids, settle down and become less angsty. By the time 2003’s poppy “Liz Phair” was released, she was more a contemporary of Sheryl Crow than Ani or Tori. Purists cringe at that album the way that “Star Wars” nerds lament the release of “The Phantom Menace” or the way Metallica fans lament when the band cut its mullets.
And now that she’s no longer signed to a label, she has carte blanche to do whatever she wants. On her new album, “Funstyle,” she raps, she mixes in loops of phones and other noises and gives voice to record executives talking about horrible the album is. It’s as if she’s had her Margot Kidder breakdown and is embracing it. You go, girl. Be as nuts as you want to be, I’ll still listen to you.
If possible, 19-year-old Pat would marry his mind’s version of 25-year-old Liz Phair. Hell, 28-year-old Pat might marry that version of Phair. She was the epitome of every cool girl you hear about in a Smithereens song. I don’t know if I’d marry the 2010 version of her, but I’d totally grab coffee and a beer with her and be her friend. We could go to cute little coffee houses and discuss music, then go to a movie, and maybe then discuss it after with a beer. We’d say “totes,” “obvee” and “unfortch,” even though she’s 43 and I’m almost 29 and probably shouldn’t talk like that.
So, my past adoration of her won’t let me write her off. Sure, I won’t listen to this album every day, nor will I re-listen to every track, but her change over time hasn’t bothered me they way has others. I think she’s growing up. Not every album is going to be pissy, existentialist angst anthems about sex and youth and all the stuff that defined her. If Kurt Cobain were still alive, do you think he’d still be putting out “Smells Like Teen Spirit”? Probably not. He might sing anthems about parenthood, the family mini-van and the mortgage crisis and how it’s tough to grow old. He would not be too different from Liz Phair. And we’d listen to it at least a few times before setting it aside, because, well, he’s Kurt Cobain and we liked him when we were younger. It’s the same reason why I won’t outright dismiss a new album by Madonna or New Order or The Magnetic Fields, and it’s the same reason why I won’t dismiss “Funstyle.” Just yet, anyway.
Some tracks from the new album: