If you’ve got issues with her latest album, that isn’t Liz Phair’s problem. It’s yours.
At least that’s the way the 36-year-old singer-songwriter sees it eight months after the release of “Liz Phair,” the superslick, Matrix-produced album that has had her dodging critics’ arrows for selling out, sexual pandering, acting too young for her age and abandoning her indie-rock roots.
Until last summer, Phair’s place in the alt-rock pantheon was secure. Her classic, sexually blunt 1993 record, “Exile in Guyville,” helped to usher in a new era for women in rock and a new wave of feminism that was less about equality with men than sexual satisfaction. Three more records solidified her reputation as an artist who didn’t shy away from difficult issues.
But in less than 50 minutes, “Liz Phair” jettisoned her from indie rock’s throne. A former critics’ darling became a pariah.
A less secure artist might have a hard time with such a radical sea change, but, she said, “It hasn’t done anything to me, honestly, I swear to God. I knew people were gonna get upset, and I didn’t expect their vehemence, but it almost saved me the extremity to which they went because it was so easy to hear that it was a lot about them.”
With her latest record — which has sold 312,000 copies since its release last June — Phair seems to be saying, “Get over it.” She has.
Life changes
A lot has happened to Phair in the past decade. She has been married — and divorced — and has a 6-year-old son. Four years ago she moved from her native Chicago to Manhattan Beach, Calif. She’s returning to Chicago for a sold-out show Friday at the Vic Theatre.
“Liz Phair” is a reflection of the life she has lived. Some of the songs are superficial throwaways, but many are as feminist, foul-mouthed and button-pushing as “Guyville” or “Whip-Smart” or “Whitechocolatespaceegg.” They’re just filtered through a more mature lens.
Lyrically, Phair is wrangling with the same issue: the pleasures and pains of sex. She’s merely looking at that issue from a thirtysomething point of view. Exploring the difficulty of maintaining sexual excitement in an aging relationship, the pleasures of sleeping with younger men and the use of sex as a beauty aid, her latest record is oftentimes just as thought-provoking as her previous albums.
But they’re incongruous with the supersmooth production values that have been glazed on top of some of the songs courtesy of the Matrix, the group that helped propel Avril Lavigne onto the pop charts. The syrupy sound meshed well with the Canadian’s traditional teen angst, but it isn’t such a perfect fit for Phair, who was condemned for embracing a sound that seemed like a cheap ploy for commercial radio airplay in a market dominated by pop stars half her age.
Production value, she said, “is like fashion to me. It’s like wearing different clothes different days to suit your mood.”
Still out there
Some would have preferred her to save the “clothing” for her album cover, on which she strikes a next-to-naked, come-hither pose — hair hanging loose, head angled back, lips slightly parted, guitar propped between her legs. Flashing her breasts on her debut album cover as a 26-year-old was OK, but flashing a lot of skin at 36 is, apparently, taboo. So taboo, in fact, that Starbucks refused to carry her record unless she changed the cover, even though “there are women whose album covers show 60 percent to 80 percent more,” she said.
“I actively fight against the idea that as a woman ages, her sexuality isn’t her own to use as she wants for her whole life,” Phair said. “That’s saying that her sexuality is purely acceptable in a reproductive capacity. It’s unseemly if she’s not of childbearing years to proclaim herself as a sexual being, which I take great offense at because it’s your personal domain for your whole life to be sexual in whatever way you want, just the way a man can.”
According to Phair, who has been dating a younger man she “really, really likes” for about six months, “I feel hotter than I ever felt. I’m having better sex than I ever was, and I’m supposed to hide this because of my age?”
Yep. Phair is still very much the feisty, no-holds-barred artist who drew fans and critics to her in the first place. “If there’s some issue that people have with me not being alternative anymore or being a woman approaching 40 still dressing sexually or whatever, I figure if you get that kind of strong reaction,” she said, “you’re touching on something that probably should be talked about.”
