You can call it a comeback, but don’t dub Liz Phair's Soberish a “return to form”
Music Reviews Liz Phair
What makes Liz Phair heroic to some and intimidating to others (those who deserve it, let’s say) is her ability to pierce the emotional heart of a situation. At her best, a good Liz Phair lyric goes beyond cutting through bullshit into the type of earth-shaking insight that leaves you speechless. Of course, being “real” and a “truth teller” can be a trap, as Phair knows better than almost anybody: The Cassandra of the ’90s Chicago alt-rock scene has spent the past couple of decades experimenting with her image, and has been pilloried for it by critics. Too nasty, too sweet, too soft, too slick—the only solution is to find a place in the middle. And that’s what she does on Soberish, her first record in a decade.
This is an album written by a full-grown adult; as she puts it in a press release, “If you reach for too much of a good thing, or starve yourself with too little, you’ll lose that critical balance.” Some of the songs on Soberish come from that place of hard-won perspective, as when Phair rolls a joint for an inebriated barfly on penultimate track “Dosage” before imparting this perceptive—and catchy—advice she got from Henry the bartender: “Dosage is everything, it hurts you or it helps.” When it comes to matters of the heart, however, she’s still figuring things out. Over the course of Soberish, relationships are captured at every stage, from “sneaking past the maid” for a hotel-room tryst to downing a shot in order to work up the courage to end things.
This time, however, Phair’s direct melodies and raw lyrics are accompanied by instrumentation, and lots of it. Phair describes this record as a journey into her “art school years spent listening to Art Rock and New Wave music non-stop on my Walkman,” citing bands like The English Beat, R.E.M., The Psychedelic Furs, Talking Heads, and The Cars as the formative influences being re-explored. The ’80s does appear in the hard, tinny drum machine that powers “In There,” as well as on “The Game,” a song that opens with a little John Cougar Mellencamp by way of Liz Phair. But some of the production is orchestral enough to flirt with chamber pop, like the strings backing lead single “Hey Lou.”
Soberish starts off strong, opening with the infectious “Spanish Doors” and building to “Hey Lou,” whose chorus is the most invasive earworm on an album that has plenty of them. It’s told from the perspective of an exasperated wife–specifically, Laurie Anderson, artist, musician, and spouse of the late Lou Reed—but also an abstract revolt against entitled male “genius” in general. (Anderson is another artist Phair name-checks in the album press kit, and the music video features puppet versions of the couple—an Anderson signature.) It also has the benefit of being honed into a strong, compact three-minute pop song, a quality the second half of the record lacks. For example, “Ba Ba Ba”’s lyrics cut deep—“I don’t have the guts to tell you I feel safe,” Phair sings, a throwaway line some artists would build an entire song around—but the song devolves into humming and handclaps, as if she couldn’t be bothered to finish her thought.
In this way, the same unbothered attitude that makes Soberish feel authentic also hurts it. Phair’s self-conscious tinkering is less blatant here than it was on 2010’s Funstyle—yes, there is a teensy bit of spoken word (“rapping” isn’t quite the right term), but it’s far from the focus of the record. And while the orchestral elements add some much-needed texture, too many of the songs unfold at the same midtempo pace, an effect that makes the title track, for one, seem much longer than it actually is. (The unfocused structure doesn’t help matters.) Phair’s vocals come through clear and unadorned, thanks to producer Brad Wood (who brought us her classic early records Exile In Guyville, Whip-Smart, and part of whitechocolatespaceegg), highlighting brilliant nuggets of melody like the up-and-down accompaniment to “When you think back on us / I don’t want you to feel bad,” leading into the big, strummed chorus of “Good Side.” (Between that song and opener “Spanish Doors,” this is Phair’s best divorce material since Guyville.) But Wood’s work exposes the weaknesses in songs as often as it mitigates them, as on “Soul Sucker,” a track that’s written like a feral PJ Harvey blues number and produced like a radio pop hit.
Four albums in, one assumes that Phair likes this commercial gloss, or else she wouldn’t keep doing it. Soberish is clearly a return to her roots, but calling it a “return to form” would require throwing out the entirety of her post-2000 output as an aberration—something that she, based on the affected arrangements and canned handclaps on this record, is unwilling to do, at least in terms of production. And who are we to say what is or isn’t the “true” Liz Phair, anyway? Many artists who start out lo-fi eventually move into a bigger, more produced sound. Whether we like it has something to do with the music—one could argue that Phair doesn’t need to gussy things up like she does—but it also has something to do with the expectations we place on a songwriter with the ability to speak to our souls. Phair speaks freely now about how that pressure from said expectations almost broke her, and you have to admit, whether it was conscious or not, making a series of commercial pop albums to shed the burden of street cred is kind of hilarious. The queen of self-sabotage she may be, but at least, as she sings on “Good Side,” “I try to be original.”
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I’m excited to listen to this: “Spanish Doors” and “Good Side” are both very good, even though I liked the Lou Reed/Laurie Anderson one less.
And as far as her much-maligned post-2000 albums go, I’ve been playing the self-titled a fair amount in the last few years and I like it a lot. It’s not as good as Exile, but there’s some really good songs on there.
Music critics and fans can be elitist and narrow minded pricks sometimes. I finally listened to Funstyle just this month. It was definitely an experience, but it had some good songs, and bad songs, and some weird songs. Bad reviews are one thing, and are fine if they are fair. But the viciousness her post-2000s work has received is another.
I thought the self-titled album was pretty bad. I mean, you’re right that a few of the songs are decent, but the remainder are terrible enough to overshadow that. The one after that was pretty meh, and I actually haven’t heard anything she’s done since. This one is getting pretty good buzz, so there’s a chance I’ll actually find the time to check it out.
Her shift to more polished, more produced work started with whitechocolatespaceegg and what’s come afterward, both the glossy pop albums and her screwing around and having fun on Funstyle, all feel very much like sequels to that album.If there’s a “true” Liz Phair — because apparently musicians have to calcify at a certain age and style, or something — it’s probably found somewhere in wcse.
It took me a while to like whitechocolatespaceegg, but eventually I got there, and now I’d consider it easily her second best, after the obvious stone cold classic that is Exile in Guyville.
In earlier days I used to say that I like each Liz album about half as much as the one that came before. EIG is all killer/no filler, Whip-Smart doesn’t quite hit those heights but still has many can’t-miss classics, wcse has a glimmer or two of the old Liz in “Johnny Feelgood” and “Baby Got Going” and “Ride,” and after that I think it’s clear that she and I were growing apart in our tastes. A poppier version of Liz isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker; I think “What Makes You Happy” is a fine pop song, but the combination of her quirky-specific lyricism and sleek pop production just doesn’t delight me the way it clearly does her. Which is fine!
In earlier days I used to say that I like each Liz album about half as much as the one that came before. EIG is all killer/no filler, Whip-Smart doesn’t quite hit those heights but still has many can’t-miss classics, wcse has a glimmer or two of the old Liz in “Johnny Feelgood” and “Baby Got Going” and “Ride,” and after that I think it’s clear that she and I were growing apart in our tastes. A poppier version of Liz isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker; I think “What Makes You Happy” is a fine pop song, but the combination of her quirky-specific lyricism and sleek pop production just doesn’t delight me the way it clearly does her. Which is fine!
I saw her in ‘99 ostensibly touring behind WCSE, although half the show’s 18-song set came from Exile. I was a bit lukewarm on WCSE at first as well, and then after the s/t came out I went back to WCSE and I’d say it’s now my 2nd favorite LP of hers. I actually wish the s/t had more of the charmingly pitchy vocal performances of songs like ‘Polyester Bride’.
This album sounds a **lot** like whitechocolatespaceegg to me. Which I guess would make it my third favorite of hers?
I knew someone who insisted Elliott Smith alone with a guitar was the only Elliott Smith…but Elliott Smith was recording albums with his band Heatmiser during most of that period (including at least one flat out masterpiece “Plainclothes Man”)…and his solo work started adding more instrumentation pretty much right after solo work became his only focus…so which one is the real one?
Those people are flat-out tiresome-ass wankers. Figure 8 is just as brilliant as anything else he’s done, and having some backing takes away nothing. They’re just fetishizing some bullshit notion of sparseness-as-more-legitimate, nothing more.
I can understand liking the stripped down version better, if that’s what you like…it’s the gross rockism ownership that turns me off, especially considering the version of him that was being deified didn’t exactly exist. Not to mention that a lot of people (not necessarily Smith) do their solo stuff by themselves just to MAKE MORE MONEY (see: every time I go to a concert expecting a band and get Ted Leo without the Pharmacists, Frank Black without the Catholics, Chance the Rapper with his horn section on an iPod)
XO and Figure 8 are my two favorite Elliott Smith albums, much as I like the Kill Rock Stars stuff.
The s/t didn’t deserve the dreaded ‘0.0′ from Pitchfork — I can’t think of a record that does — and there’s a solid EP of material there, primarily the first five songs and ‘Friend of Mine’. I can’t really remember anything from Somebody’s Miracle, aside from “Table for One”. Funstyle is pretty much a disaster, intentional or no.Curious about the new record. Been listening to Whip-Smart a lot lately, which I was a bit lukewarm on back in ‘94 but have come to really appreciate.
I think if one can extract a solid EP from the s/t, you can do the same with “You Should Know Me,” “Miss September,” “Satisfied,” “Oh, Bangladesh,” and “And He Slayed Her” off Funstyle, or “Table for One,” “Got My Own Thing,” “Leap of Innocence,” and “Wind and the Mountain” off Somebody’s Miracle. Basically, 2003-2010 Liz is the singer-songwriter version of Weezer, where there’s a full album’s worth of stuff that’s (for me) as good as anything on the earlier and more consistent albums, but spread over too many discs. And this one, upon first listen, is akin to one of the last few Weezer albums, where the batting average is much higher and it feels more like a single developed idea, even if it’s not quite at that peak level.(I say all of this with the caveat that Phair is a much better lyricist than Rivers.)
Much like, say, Raditude, I wouldn’t say there’s no good songs on Funstyle, but rather the bad songs are so bad that I’m disinclined to try and salvage the good ones. I should probably go back and reappraise Somebody’s Miracle, which just failed to make much of an impression on me at the time.I’m really having a hard time getting my head around current-day Weezer. Everything Will Be Alright and The White Album brought me fully back into the fold, and then Pacific Daydream pushed me right back out. I like OK Human a lot, haven’t heard Van Weezer yet.
Raditude is a great comparison, because they’re both albums where I may not have listened to them front to back since 2009-2011, but I’ve listened to the better 50% of them COUNTLESS times and they both include some of my favorite songs from their respective artists. I looooove “If You’re Wondering If I Want You To” and “You Should Know Me” and those are fixtures on my (old guy alert) iPod even though the albums themselves are wildly, frustratingly, provocatively uneven.
I generally like the White-and-beyond years (I was underwhelmed by Alright, even though it’s probably “better” than some of the ones since then), though they haven’t equaled White since then. Van Weezer is a little silly, has some cringeworthy lyrics, but benefits so much from the unity of form/purpose. It feels like a full album, and even the one or two real clunkers don’t feel as clunky as like, that shit about the mall on Raditude. My first listen of Soberish provoked a similar reaction: It doesn’t feel like a compilation of songs from six different sessions like the s/t or Funstyle. (To a lesser extent, Somebody’s Miracle has a similarly pleasing unity; it’s uneven, but it’s just a matter of some good songs that could have been on WCSE vs some bad songs that could have appeared on the same record, albeit in a more blemish-y way.)
Which one has “Little Digger?” To me, that’s an essential one to save if we’re going to shelve large chunks of the self-titled and Somebody’s Miracle.
There’s a through-line from the marital dissatisfaction in wcse to the dating-in-her-50s stuff on Soberish, and pausing for (a fictionalized) Nick meeting a new boyfriend of Liz’s is an important tough step along the way.
That song is one of the few that just wrecks me when I listen to it, even years later.
Ah right, “Little Digger”. That’s on the s/t too.
If that’s the one about wondering how her young son is processing her divorce, it’s from her self titled record.
I made a playlist of her post-WCSE, pre-Soberish material that in my mind-canon is her 4th album, with the new one being her 5th proper release. So far the delusion has been working out fine for me.
1. Little Digger (Liz Phair)2. Friend of Mine (Liz Phair)3. Jeremy Engle (ComeAndGetIt EP)4. Fine Again (ComeAndGetIt EP)5. Leap of Innocence (Somebody’s Miracle)6. Got My Own Thing (Somebody’s Miracle)7. Table for One (Somebody’s Miracle)8. Don’t Apologize (Rarity from a CMJ compilation)9. Satisfied (Funstyle)10. And He Slayed Her (Funstyle)11. Miss September (Funstyle)
Here are the songs I’d add, to make it a double album (or a 1 1/2?):Firewalker, Love/Hate, Bionic Eyes (Liz Phair)Stars and Planets (Somebody’s Miracle)Bangladesh (Funstyle)Also, here’s the writer of the Pitchfork 0.0 review recanting, sort of:
Also, I’m not sure what Katie’s talking about – “Soul Sucker” is awesome!
The 0.0 really reflects the problem with Pitchfork in the 2000s. It wasn’t a review of the album, but instead Pitchfork’s relationship with their audience and the music industry. If Liz Phair was under the radar, they could push her as a should-be-popular musician that only they were cool enough to know. If Liz Phair had a radio hit on the soundtrack of a kids movie, it proved that she was actually interested in success. And that means she wasn’t going to give Pitchfork cred anymore, so they had to overreact.The whole discourse around music has changed substantially since, so stabs at popularity are less controversial now and streaming kind of torpedoes ubiquity. But at the time, there was a clear aversion to liking anything potentially popular.Which isn’t saying that the album is great or anything, largely because I haven’t listened to it in a long time, but just that Pitchfork didn’t really review it.
Early ‘00s Pitchfork is really the epitome of the phenomenon when a group of largely immature people have way, way too much influence. And I’m reminded of someone commenting that if, say, NYC Ghosts & Flowers or Liz Phair or Travistan actually deserved a 0.0, what rating would you give, say, a neo-Nazi band?Also, in 2001, I was on a compilation of Police covers that Pitchfork rated a 2.4. The review literally included the all-caps words “THIS RELEASE IS NOT WORTH PURCHASING OR INVESTIGATING”. But they gave us a 2.4, not a 0.0! (For better or worse, that piece does not appear to be findable in the site’s recently launched review database.)
Oh wow, you have firsthand experience with the ol’ review database scrub! I always have to roll my eyes at the, ah, CURATION that allowed Pitchfork to simply toss some of their funniest *and* some of their worst/snottiest reviews.
I’ll go to bat for “Autopilot” from Death to False Metal, another mess of an album (although at least that was a B-sides collection). There is something to be said for a tonally consistent departure, which is part of why I like OK Human (and it’s a pretty good batch of songs too). King Gizzard is another band that’s become very much about album themes, so they can release a psych/boogie fusion record and then a thrash metal record four months later.I don’t know if the missing Pitchfork review is due to curation or just lost in the shuffle — it does seem like compilations always got short shrift in the site’s search feature — but yeah, for the outsized impact they had, it seems like they really should try to own that period as much as possible. And the review database does seem to have some glaring omissions. Also, I’ve just learned the comp (which I thought was pretty good!) is on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4Ls76mKUPOO67ADegS73LC
People (including myself) just hated it at the time because we know she’s better than that. And I really liked spaceegg
Not exactly related to this, but I love the idea of suburban parents buying their kids copies of Liz Phair’s album because she’s on the 13 Going On 30 soundtrack and then hearing it and being like “WTF?!?!?”
While I never listen to any of Liz Phair’s post-WCSE albums, I do like that song that’s in 13 Going on 30. I still can’t tell if I like the movie because of the song or if I like the song because of the movie.
I think those parents would likely be shocked if they actually listened closely to “Why Can’t I?” It’s about the start of an affair, where both parties are already in committed relationships.
But yes, it’s nothing compared to what happens when they hear EIG for the first time.
Or find out what “HWC” stands for.
Or maybe they’ll think “Hey, she’s right! If we do it backwards we *can* fuck and watch TV!”
Does “13 Going on 3o” have some sort of cult status? Because I am finding it hard to believe that today’s kids are so into a movie that came out before they were born, that they just have to hear more music from that nice lady who had a catchy song on the soundtrack.
Hell if I know…it’s on HBO right now which is why I saw it about 15 years after its release. For all I know no parents ever watched that with any kids, much less their own.But I did find it funny that they thought that was a cool song to throw into a sanitized tween movie.
She’s fantastic and the new album is killer. I also really dig Juliana Hatfield’s new album. Makes me feel hopeful that these artists still do their thing so well.
I haven’t heard Hatfield’s newest yet, but her previous on-cover album, Weird, was very solid.
I like it!
I got back into Hatfield with 2011’s There’s Always Another Girl, and have been following her again ever since. She’s been averaging an album a year, and some of them such as Whatever, My Love and Pussycat rival her ‘90s output. And there isn’t a weak album in the bunch.
I just listened to the new Hatfield this morning (I’m not nearly as familiar with her as with Phair) and I like it, but it seems weird to have an anti-Trump album come out in 2021.
…producer Brad Wood (who brought us her classic early records Exile In Guyville, Whip-Smart, and part of whitechocolatespaceegg)…This is a longer way to say “the parts of Liz’s catalog that I still enjoy and listen to,” and I’m sure both of us are fine with that. If she’s fulfilling herself as an artist I don’t see why my changing preferences (or lack thereof) matter all that much; very few artists will ever produce even one album as brilliant as EIG, so if she never makes another one that I like even half as much as that, it still feels like a win for both of us.
This review is bad and wrong and needlessly caustic. The album is great – it is hooky as hell, ambitious, and nails the “at a crossroads” thesis of its cover art. The title track is glorious and catchy, and if you think “Soul Sucker” sounds like she was going for a PJ Harvey vibe, please listen to more PJ Harvey. To my ears Liz has hit a bullseye.
I’m just here to say that, yes, early-90s brown houndstooth and brown tartan needs to make a comeback, dammit.
Why is every music video like this now where they build a woman lol lil kim did it first in the early 2000s lolnick minaj did itariana grande did it loland of course bella now with build a bitch lol
Everything I’ve heard from this album, I can imagine it sounding good. I’d love to hear the demos, or hear them recorded in the style of her early stuff. Because the production is just bad, the strength of her voice is neutered by all those pads and overdubs and the percussion is embarrasingly basic. If someone re-records these songs on an 8 track tape recorder I will buy the shit out of that album
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