E-Mail This Article to a Friend Girls, girls, girls From Liz Phair and Jewel to Erase Errata and Ludus BY FRANKLIN BRUNO

The great Viennese satirist Karl Kraus knew that the best way to reveal a public figure’s foolishness is by direct quotation. In that spirit, here’s a mouthful of Jewel taken from a June Billboard interview about her new dance-friendly 0304 (Atlantic): "This is my pop-culture record. The world is complicated and hard, and people want to be able to lose themselves in the rhythm. People want to feel young and sexy and smart; and like things are okay — including me." And on her new cleavage-friendly look: "I always believed you can’t be smart and sexy at the same time. But at this point, people know who I am and what I stand for, so I feel like I can play with that image and offer some irony."

"Including me?" Does she mean that she, like everyone else, wants to feel "young and sexy and smart," or just that she, like everything else, is "okay"? The one interpretation has her generalizing from her own shallowness; the other would mean she’s reading a different news source from the rest of us. And it’s edifying to learn that "irony" involves hiring Shakira hitmaker Lester Mendez, gracing Blender magazine in a bustier and a smirk, and releasing a single that drops the words "digital" and "postmodern."

In truth, compared with Jewel’s usual mewling, the ’80s-styled "Intuition" is a good single. And though it’s sad to witness the ongoing Maxim-ization of female musicians, her willful plundering of her own booty isn’t really the problem. It’s the blatant whiff of strategy, combined with her easy, integrity-preserving use of "irony," that makes her bid to retain superstar standing look like folkie false-consciousness at its flimsiest.

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of women who know that real sexuality is "complicated and hard." Starting with Liz Phair. Yes, the figleaf-Fender cover shot on her new Liz Phair (Capitol) is silly, especially since she barely plays guitar anymore, but it’s downright demure by Exile in Guyville (Matador) standards. That album was an unrepeatable act of zeitgeist capture; these days, the only pulse she’s taking is her own. Despite a good deal of filler and songwriting-by-committee, something closer to a personality than an image breaks free of the Matrix’s hi-res production. On the best songs, Phair plays an ungracefully aging Gen X diva, still hot but plenty nervous about what’s on the other side of the hill. "H.W.C." commends a young lover’s hot white I-can’t-bring-myself-to-type-it, but there’s more uncertainty behind Phair’s pottymouth defiance than ever.

Another good place to hear hard takes on female sexuality is the new Sonic Youth/Erase Errata split single, "Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Handcream"/"Glitter" (Narnack). Erase Errata’s "Glitter" finds the all-female Bay Area noise punks in a more spacious mood than 2001’s dense Other Animals (Troubleman Unlimited) did, with Jenny Hoyston’s vocals bridging the gaps in a skeletal rhythm sketch. Any trace of pop glamor comes from the subject matter — Carey’s brutally unwatchable film debut — rather than the band’s bone-snapping attack. The flip side isn’t a Ciccone Youth–style throwaway but a bona fide song that trims the rock structures of Murray Street (Geffen/Interscope) to seven-inch length. What it all has to do with Long Island’s gift to melismatic overkill, or free-jazz outsider Doyle, is anyone’s guess — Kim Gordon’s growl is almost as untranslatable as Hoyston’s howl.

Despite her place in Manchester punk lore as sleeve designer for the Buzzcocks’ "Orgasm Addict," the music Linder Sterling made between 1979 and 1983 with guitarist Ian Devine and a variety of rhythm sections under the name Ludus has been largely forgotten. On the evidence of The Damage (LTM), an 18-track compilation of their most accessible work, Ludus are ripe for rediscovery. Devine’s clean, high-life-influenced guitar playing dissents from the era’s post-punk party line, and Sterling’s confrontational, sex-positive feminism emphasizes personal freedom over social justice. "Wrapped in Silence" ticks off a laundry list of female roles, all possible, all unsatisfactory: "The bride crying in the night . . . the bossy, too-big-for-her-boots girl." For Sterling, identity play is a sort of blood sport: "The Escape Artist" caps six minutes of deceptively light funk pop with gut-wrenching screams, as if a Haircut 100 single had suddenly been hijacked by Diamanda Galás. On songs like this, she’s "young and sexy and smart," but nothing is okay — including her.