E-Mail This Article to a Friend Un-Phair play An old Phan’s look at the new Liz BY CLEA SIMON

Let’s talk about investing in an artist. I first heard about Liz Phair from my friend A. A. was the wild one — the girl who’d dared to Fed Ex a dead rat to an unfaithful ex, the one who’d paid her rent, when she was first out in LA, by taxi-dancing ("Always wear red lipstick and the highest heels you can stand"). But she’d never really been into music. So when she called and told me, "You’ve got to listen to this," I listened. The "this" was Exile in Guyville (Matador), Phair’s notoriously rough-edged and plainspoken debut. What had hooked A. was not so much the raw musicality of the disc but the slice-of-life lyrics that spoke of sex and lying in our society.

The timing was perfect: we were both only recently past the era of "Fuck and Run" encounters, when we’d put on the defiant swagger of "Never Said" as we tried for our moment of "Glory." How could you be a young single female with blood in your veins and not love an artist who sang frankly of lust, of wanting to be someone’s "blow-job queen"? Like A., I became invested in Liz Phair.

This kind of emotional attachment isn’t necessarily a good thing. It breeds the communicative laziness of mix tapes, of trusting the "special message" of someone else’s art to convey your own feelings. It goes beyond confusing the artist and the art to meld the artist and the listener. But we do it because the art that other person has produced has given voice to our inchoate feelings. Liz Phair spoke about what A. and I were going through.

For this Phan, at least, that investment paid off for two more albums. Whip-smart (Matador, 1994) explicated "Jealousy" and celebrated a "Supernova" love. Whitechocolatespaceegg (Capitol, 1998) verbalized our frustrations with life’s expectations in "Polyester Bride" and called us out with the sentiments of "Shitloads of Money": "It’s nice to be liked, but it’s better by far to get paid."

We should’ve taken the hint. But here is where being overly invested in an artist becomes a problem. Ten years in, Phair still hasn’t had a breakthrough hit, and the market has gotten exponentially more competitive. Therefore, this Phan reasons, the artist must have felt pressured by market forces to record a more accessible album. So Liz Phair, her latest Capitol release, is what she had to do, not what she wanted to do. Right?

How else to explain the firestorm over the disc’s middle-of-the-road power ballads and canned rave-ups? They’re not all bad songs: "Little Digger" sports a sweet lyricism and "Take a Look" a gentle swing. It’s just that they’re not what we’ve come to expect. The music is simplistic: Phair’s earlier convoluted structures have been replaced with verses that all lead up to the Big Chorus, an "all hook, no bait" style of writing. And even the much-vaunted special EP (available as a download with the CD) wallows in overproduction that flattens out Phair’s endearing quavers, giving her a range and sustain (notably on "Hurricane Cindy") that the goddess never intended. In terms of lyrics, well, if Phair is sleeping with guys nine years her junior, more power to her. But is "ordinary" the best rhyme she can find these days for "extraordinary"? "I can grow/In spite of all you know"? It’s clear that Phair isn’t singing for A. and me anymore.

Maybe that’s why her live show at Avalon last Sunday seemed so lifeless. Maybe that’s what made me suspicious of her note-perfect renderings of songs old (seven from Guyville) and new (a scant five from Liz Phair). I kept wondering whether backing tracks or just vocal-timbred keyboards were hidden in the mix to ensure she stayed on key.

From the set’s opener, "6’1"," through the standard closer, "Fuck and Run," Phair could have been lip-synching for all the spontaneity she showed in front of a four-piece touring band, the only exceptions being a trembling solo rendition of "Flower" (the blow-job song) and a delicately delivered "Little Digger," which opened the encore. The new tunes suffered most from the frozen-food delivery, particularly the generic big guitar attack of "Rock Me" and the power-pop hooks of "Extraordinary," which made an unfortunate segue into "Supernova," proving that the older cut is indeed the same song done better.

Yes, Phair has a history of stage fright, and that might explain the stiff grin plastered on her face. It probably wasn’t helped by the see-through mini and open-to-the-navel shirt she’s been wearing on stage, the live version of the new disc’s come-hither photos. Sure, Phair posed topless on Guyville, but she was screaming then, or at least saying something. Maybe I’m still too invested to see clearly, but I think I know what’s going on. This isn’t do-me feminism, not anymore. This is a midlist artist, approaching midlife, who feels she needs to move the product by any means necessary. I guess I can sympathize.