Liz Phair Liz Fare Liz Fair

"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

I had no idea there was a girly sound version of Shane! Wow

I was there too, it rocked. I really liked Blondshell too.

Yeah Blondshell was a great opener (I wuz already a fan, and so really pleased to see those songs played live).

yeah they were great!

Circling back to my above rambling comments (which I know no one cares about), Liz actually mentions Lana Del Rey in this new Pitchfork feature ("I had never heard of her until she played SNL, but something about her reminded people of me, which I found really surprising").

Putting that aside, I thought her comments on the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" were particularly interesting:

(...)it also became really formative for me, because it was the first time I had heard a woman clapping back in a song. Until that point I had always wondered (about the female perspective) in these stories. I would identify with the girl that they were singing about in my little romantic mind, like Cecilia — yeah, I did get up out of the bed, Paul Simon. But this was the first time that I really heard a woman say, No, no, no, let me set the record straight. That became my thing. And it all started with this stupid song. Guyville wouldn’t be Guyville without the Human League.

“Only human” also does that, was that a feature of the H League in general ?

Upcoming DC show is in a big hall and they are having it all seated in a venue that sometimes has standing area on floor (which is ok). Tickets are expensive. Saw her years back once or twice. Not sure if I will splurge . Blondshell are opening and I haven't seen them yet.

Fyi, they didn't sell out Detroit & a bunch of $20 tickets showed up on the day of the show yesterday. Not sure if that will be the case everywhere.

They also release tickets the day of (presumably unused comps). This happened with Chicago even though it had been sold out for a while.

“I would identify with the girl they were singing about in the song…like Cecilia” Sorry to be a lyrics dork but Cecilia is a song about writing a song. St Cecilia is the patron saint of songwriters.

wait is the Simon and Garfunkel song about writer’s block?

!!

Yep.

That’s an interesting factoid. (Fwiw, Phair doesn’t even get the lyric right… it’s the narrator who gets up out of bed.)

what the!

i had no idea

Finally that song makes sense and is beautiful

Paul Simon was writing a song, washed his face, and found someone else was writing his song?!?

Garfunklel’d, as they say in the biz

I was today years old when I learned…

Paul Simon was writing a song, washed his face, and found someone else was writing his song?!?

Probably Robert Lamm

“I would identify with the girl they were singing about in the song…like Cecilia” Sorry to be a lyrics dork but Cecilia is a song about writing a song. St Cecilia is the patron saint of songwriters.

(Also, don’t know what band you all are talking about, Blondshell were horrific)

I went to the Brooklyn show last night - missed Blondshell and got in my seat like 10 minutes before Phair started and it was really awesome. I wasn't sure if I'd ever see a show like this, but I really loved hearing all the lesser-known songs from Guyville, particularly the quieter cuts.

Saw her tonight in Nashville, lots of fun. This was the third time I've seen her so I'd heard the fan faves off Guyville before but it was cool to hear the lesser-known tracks. I also love how 30 years on she's still kind of perched halfway between making it and not making it — Gen X for life.

So, "making love with Cecelia" is a metaphor for writing a song, "wash my face" is some distraction (like the man from Porlock?) and "someone's taken my place" being "can't remember what I was thinking about while I was writing"..... ?

Or maybe a song was released by someone else that covered similar ground or had a similar melody.