Liz Phair Liz Fare Liz Fair

I heard that song is a second-by-second response to Led Zeppelin's "All of My Love."

Wut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4LcFHMjH9k

why

if i didn't hate him and his cult then i wouldn't hate this but i wouldn't like it either. at least bollywood was funny (sort of) and edgy (ditto)

I find that kind of touching--the kind of thing you do only for yourself.

I guess. most of her best and worst music has that feeling. you do you liz i'll pass in this instance

First and foremost, I like the way it sounds, especially the chorus. The rest is harder to explain...I stupidly missed that the woman is Laurie Anderson (duh) until I read up on it a bit; I thought it was a fantasy about her being with Reed herself. Putting that aside, I'm moved that she's singing about these people that--it would be an exaggeration to say that nobody cares about them, I realize that, but at the very least who aren't necessarily front and centre in what the rest of the world's focused on in 2021. I can relate to that in a big way. But she doesn't care--she may even be so wrapped up in her thoughts that she thinks the rest of the world's right there with her. (I remember starting a Dylan/Warhol/Godard thread/poll on here once, very pleased with my great idea; within five posts, the message very clearly was nobody cares about your stupid idea.) And, not meaning to be cruel, I think it's fair to say that her moment or whatever has passed too. Which adds to all of that, for me.

convincing appraisal. if i liked the tune more i could get on board with it despite any feelings about reed specifically

I think she's had at least 2 "moments" the more recent of which was maybe smaller but vindicative for her. but she definitely knows what it's like to be treated like a has-been (which was always bullshit and obviously gendered). sorry if this sounds condescending or faint-praisey but I do really appreciate her tenacity

Is this a new song? I think it’s the most I’ve enjoyed her stuff since whip smart.

yeah I like it too. writing about lou reed from the perspective of an aging partner whos bored with his coolguy schtick is a good idea for a liz phair song. the video is cutesy but separated from that the song doesnt scream "cult of lou" to me

I need to listen to it again. I heard it for the first time while waking up today was was like “is this song really happening?”

“Good Side” worked for me and a lot of people found it dull, so who knows.

writing about lou reed from the perspective of an aging partner whos bored with his coolguy schtick

I could see maybe doing this if Lou were still alive, but... seems super wtf to do it now

i hear what youre saying but idk, it seems gentle enough imo, it doesnt come across as like a big takedown to me. maybe my gauge is off but liz phair writing from a female partners perspective to tease the rep of a canonical male rock star is not exactly a shocking break from what i expect from her.

I hear it as affectionate, too, even towards Lou Reed (I'd count the distancing of his death as a positive).

(For the song, I mean--I'm not glad he's dead.)

seems more likely that this is a song about *a* guy named Lou or someone she thinks of as like Lou Reed, and she's riffing off that idea as a private joke. e.g. Warhol and Anderson didn't overlap in the real Reed's life.

What’s with the puppets, Liz

I found the puppets distracting. I mean it's a pleasant enough indie folk song but it's got these giant bloopy puppets.

I've liked some Lou and hated some, but this is not how I want to remember him.

I mean now I gotta go and google what he said about Warhol...

hey, Soberish is really good -- did I miss the talk on a different thread? not sure if no one cares or if people are just happy to enjoy a Liz Phair album in peace for the first time ever. I especially love "In There."

I haven't heard it yet, but I saw her twice in 2019, and the new songs she unveiled sounded disappointing, so I've been reluctant to try it out.

I still love her first three albums and the Girlysound demos, but after that there's only been a handful of songs that I've liked.

It’s in my top three albums of the year so far.

I think it just didn’t get discussed here for whatever reason

“In There” (and to an extent “The Game”) snuck up on me, kicked my ass around the block.

If this album has a fault it’s that the last couple songs don’t hit as hard as the rest, but that first 75% hits like a train for me.

I'm not sure if he's reviewed it yet, but apparently Christgau "liked and understood the craftily allusive Soberish better after reading her book (Horror Stories)."

I still need to finish that book.

I've been spending time with the Girly-Sound material – I've long owned the bootlegs, but never listened to them much, maybe because they felt like a hodgepodge of "early versions," some tracks that had already been released (e.g., on Juvenilia), etc. Listening to the tapes now, with somewhat fresh ears, they're hugely impressive... not only are the songs (obviously) terrific, but the way she takes bits & pieces of well-known/famous songs, and kind of reconfigures / recontextualizes them, feels like a significant aesthetic move that I'm sure has other precedents, but I can't think of them at the moment.

These tapes are really Ground Zero of her catalogue, in a way that may even seem "unfair" to her in some ways of looking at it (e.g., she was still culling from these demos many albums deep in her career - which is understandable!), but I feel like maybe they haven't been properly assessed/appreciated (by some at least, like me); in part because Guyville was such a big deal and these older recordings only trickled out after the fact? I dunno, I'm rambling...

I think I know what you mean. When I first heard them, I already knew her first three albums pretty well, so they came off as a rough dub of demos thrown together and that was it. Basically an inferior version of what I already enjoyed. I think that's how I approached a lot of things, including live shows - on some level, it was just a track-to-track comparison and weighing whether this version of a song was really better than that version of a song.

What's changed since then is evaluating something as its own whole entity. Springsteen on Broadway of all things made me realize this - I was highly skeptical of that endeavor, but after hearing the raves, I checked it out when I landed a cheap ticket. It was an amazing show, one of the best things Springsteen's done, and it made me completely aware of context, flow, etc. and how much all of those things mattered even with very familiar material. And that's what what happened with Phair's demos - I listened to them again as they were originally arranged, and they do work like mixtapes, where the bits and pieces and other things are part of a cohesive work. I need to give them another close listen, but those three cassettes did flow like albums.

"Easy Target" (which interpolates lyrics from "Do You Love Me" and “It’s in His Kiss”), feels like the centerpiece of the whole project – it's an amazing song...

After cobbling together the mp3s sometime around 2010 from a few blogs I resequenced it from 3 tapes to 2 cd-length (double albums) - one of tracks later released on her studio records ("Road to Guyville"), and one of the rest, the true juvenalia ("Exiled on Girly St."), much of it excellent. Helps me a bit with the overwhelming volume of stuff to deal with I guess. The songs Liz officially released on Juvenalia like dead shark and batmobile remain among my favorite, which i find interesting, but that could well just be the "partiality to what you heard first" effect.

The sound of girlysound, minimalist and postmodern, with tape hiss and slacker attitude hiding gobs of talent later to be pissed away in lame or bizarre hifi pop stabs really fits well with a few other of the hippest elements of the lo-fi trend (pavement, sebadoh, beat happening, frogs, unrest, ween), I wonder if someone's made a good playlist of this.

Yeah, the songs released on Juvenilia are particularly good ones – including "Easy" (which, ftr, is not the same song as "Easy Target," mentioned above).

The sound of girlysound, minimalist and postmodern, with tape hiss and slacker attitude hiding gobs of talent

^This is dead-on, btw... there's obviously a kindred spirit going on w/Sentridoh and a trillion other things going on in those years, but most probably not as good as those examples.

It's also interesting how several of the songs reference the Gulf War, which really situate them in a particular time

Some comparison probably could be made to TMBG's Dial-a-Song catalog. The earlier in their career that that stuff got fleshed out and fully recorded, the better. But certain tracks in their warbley, noisy, half-audible form were sort of inherently better than they ever could have been as clean, punchy, studio creations.

I have home cassette recordings of friends' bands from the early 2000s that still have an incredible magic to them. Something about the way the bassier end of rhythmic guitar strumming turns into a warm space-filling bath, while the high end is still able to cut through and add these notes of jangle-pop prettiness, light and longing. There must be acres of old threads on lo-fi aesthetics that would say all this better and more thoughtfully than I can.

As a side note, the tapes also have a vitality that's missing from Guyville... not to be an iconoclast or anything, but I've always felt like Guyville is sort of stiff and not-awesomely-recorded (of course, it has lots of great songs).

Clicking around earlier, I found this "oral history" of Guyville... it's funny to me how Dan Koretzky pops up a few times, basically making fun of everyone involved (typical Drag City 'tude).

Hopefully someday the WCSE demos will see release, too.

i adore the sound on Guyville! but makes sense that it's not everybody's thing.

For me, it’s mostly about the performances… I feel like wood and rice sort of let her down in some ways. The playing exists in this space between “ragged indie“ and “amateurs trying for a professional rock sound.” I feel like a different team could’ve ended up with better takes of the songs, by committing more in either of those “directions”… (but again, I know I’m nitpicking a classic).

xp same here.

Re: the performances, I actually love them on Exile and they feel perfect for that album in particular. Let's say that the instrumental performances sounded exactly like the Stones circa 1972, which is about as high of a standard as you can get in terms of technical proficiency. The record gains something, but I think it loses something too. I don't see it connecting on the same level - like a lot of these songs feel like they're coming from the perspective (not to be confused with autobiographical, I'm just talking narrative perspective) of a regular person and not some guitar goddess or someone who knocks you over with instrumental prowess.

she also has basically an entire CD of "other" unreleased tracks from the 90s, see my post in this other thread - link should still work:

TS: Juvenilia VERSUS Whip-Smart VERSUS whitechocolatespaceegg (Or, Liz Phair, minus the baggage)

a lot of these songs feel like they're coming from the perspective (…) of a regular person and not some guitar goddess

Ftr, I totally agree w/this… but I don’t think better drumming would have ruined the effect!

well I got up and put Guyville on the stereo this morning and guess what? it fucking rules.

Revisiting all of Guyville & Girly-Sound today, in anticipation of seeing Phair perform Guyville in its entirety ("...Plus Fan Favorites") on Friday.

One thing to add to my thoughts above re: Girly-Sound is how particularly great the third tape ("Sooty") is. Even when you're streaming the entire glut of songs in a sitting (as I'm doing now) – and enjoying them! – your ears sort of prick up (no pun intended) an extra degree when "Gigolo" comes on. There's a particular magic in this final batch of tunes; which I guess makes sense, considering that several of them ended up on Juvenilia.

(Btw, just learned from Wikipeda that "Gigolo" was reworked for Somebody's Miracle (as "Can't Get Out of What I'm Into")... her final dip into the demos for material. I'll have to check that out... I probably listened to that album once, if at all.)

Love this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra7IjCoAmCA

It just makes me flash back to the first time I heard it, and listened to it over and kvetZ

Turns out I wouldn't have heard "Can't Get Out of What I'm Into" even if I did check out Somebody's Miracle – as it was only on advance copies, and the Japanese edition. Good recording (those guitars)!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXd2htiC0SI

xp "Suckerfish" is great!

My favorite thing, though, are those lovely, heart-tugging counter-melodies on "Slave," which she layers behind the Jesus & Mary Chain melody... like, how'd she come up with that??

not only are the songs (obviously) terrific, but the way she takes bits & pieces of well-known/famous songs, and kind of reconfigures / recontextualizes them, feels like a significant aesthetic move that I'm sure has other precedents, but I can't think of them at the moment.

^Going back to this comment (by me) – I think it's notable that two of the most powerful songs on these tapes are "Easy Target" and "Slave," both of which are built upon well-known melodies. Earlier this year, after listening to the early Lana Del Rey acoustic stuff (the "May Jailer" demos), I remarked how some of the songs reminded me a little of the Girly-Sound material... not to make too much of it, as the similarity isn't that strong, but I think it's there. And while I can't immediately think of cases where Lana has interpolated preexisting melodies in her songs, referencing lyrics/musicians/etc. is obv a centerpiece of her "artistry."

Also seems that Liz (Phair) and Lizzy (Grant) may have come from somewhat similar suburban milieus(?) Guess I don't really have much of a point, other than to suggest that there are links btw these two artists whom on the surface seem Phair-ly dissimilar (and whose career paths have definitely, well, diverged).

heart-tugging counter-melodies

On the flipside, she improved "Bomb" by removing the countermelodies when it became "Stratford-on-Guy" (...yes, I listened to the entire set of demos again today).

The show last night was lots of fun... the crowd was very into it – a theater full of super appreciative fans – and Liz seemed genuinely moved (this is in contrast to a Breeders show at the same theater, a few weeks back, where the crowd was oddly cold).

Her band was four young dudes dressed in black; pretty much exactly how you would picture the Liz Phair Band to look. The songs from the album sounded good, and they did cool things with some of the arrangements, while staying faithful to the original feel. There's something a little funny (in a charming way) about some of these offbeat little songs being presented with such fanfare (and also now, at her age and all our ages); Liz did little "dramatic routines" for a few of them. The big rockers sounded great.

The encore did indeed consist of a few "fan favorites"... Dave Pirner, of all people, came out and played "Go West" with her (dude still has the hair). The final song was "Why Can't I," which doesn't exactly push my personal nostalgia buttons... but it went over really well, and I could see it meant a lot to some of the folks around me. Why not!

SF show ruled

no special guests but she closed with Supernova, Go West and Why Can’t I

rowdy crowd too, lots of fun