I'm thrilled to see the backlash against Liz Phair of late -- that's been due for, what, 17 years? I've long, long been one of the Liz Phair dislikers -- I thought she was a cynical opportunist, an artistic fraud right out of the box. I liked "Stratford-On-Guy" (somewhat), but thought her masterpiece, "Exile in Guyville" -- her seminal, iconic, fuck-me feminist play-by-play that owed its very existence to the Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street" the way that "Ulysses" owed its existence to "The Odyssey" and "Ahab's Wife" (and "Lo's Diary") owe their existences to "Moby-Dick" and "Lolita" -- I thought it was decidedly mediocre. It was only because Liz Phair was who she was that it gained any legs at all.
Meta. Meta. Meta to the bone. That alone bugs the bejeezus out of me. The novelty of a young woman singing dirty songs and swearing and ginning up her posh Winnetka life with tales of the mean streets of Wicker Park (haha -- I think she spent a few months dicking around in Wicker Park in its heady early 90s days when there was a scene of sorts there, but she came from the rarefied air of Winnetka, not the whitebread gritty fauxhemia of Wicker Park) -- it was intoxicating to a generation of hipsters and scenesters and indie rock dickheads and [prefix of choice]-feminists.
And the thing is, as a con goes, Phair triumphed -- by and large, these folks swallowed the swindle (a few notable standouts were Steve Albini, who was onto it from the start, and wrote about it, famously referring to Phair and Urge Overkill and Smashing Pumpkins as "the three pandering sluts"). It was the Great Train Robbery, and Phair was Ronnie Biggs.
Liz Phair, Pheminist.
Anyway, I think Phair was conning people at the outset, which was why her subsequent efforts were so artistically bankrupt even as she did things like marrying her producer and tapping Pop music svengalis to try to spin off some more hits for her. But each effort brought ever-diminishing returns -- without the meta-album conceit to fall back on and frame her work for her, Phair's already-meager talents were worn threadbare, until the half-clad Indie Empress was finding herself without a stitch -- which wasn't something she was particular averse to, since it was part of her shtick, anyway. Like Sheryl Crow's sluttier younger sister, basically (and no doubt Crow offered Phair a kind of roadmap for that bland commercial empty success Phair was surely striving for).
Still, St. Liz was unassailable for such a long time (what I'd call the "Phairness Doctrine" -- basically, anything Phair did was apologized for and explained away), by the same acolytes and music journalists that had swilled the pop cultural Kool-Aid to begin with -- having already checked their aesthetics at the door in 1993, they had already invested their egos in her, and were reluctant to cop to the fraud without admitting that they were as full of shit as Phair was, or that they had been fooled.
Until now, apparently. In her latest musical debacle, "Funstyle," her acolytes are scratching their heads and wondering what the hell Phair is up to. Rapping on one of the tunes, lamenting the crass commercialism of the music industry (only lamenting it because her efforts to cash in had ultimately failed) and so on. Even Indie Rock Dickheads without peer like Pitchfork are what-the-fucking this latest release (as you can see here).
The challenge her fans and apologists face is accepting that they were duped at the outset (and Phair certainly deserves credit for tapping a perfect zeitgeist moment with "Exile in Guyville" -- she certainly was in the right place at the right time with that effort, pulling a Jedi Mind Trick on so many people). So, I'm enjoying watching and hearing people come to terms with this new album in various ways -- mostly centered around either denial (like "What was she thinking?") or a kind of qualified acceptance (like "Well, it's not SO terrible.") to angry rejection (like "She's insane. This is SHIT!") Charlatans, one and all, facing (or about-facing) an epiphany.
My beefs with Phair were manifold -- false Indie Rock/Alternative; the meta-album template leading to her singular triumph; the lack of much to sing about or musical talent on her part; the shameless, calculated chasing after commercialism (while at the same time carrying her Indier Than Thou creds in her back pocket, like a hairbrush); the notion of Phair as some kind of ur-feminist icon "voice of a generation" (without actually carving out much in the way of new ground, beyond "fuck-me feminism" -- which isn't much of a feminism at all) -- all of these bugged me (and worse, how critiques of Phair were often derided for being anti-feminist, when really it was anti-bullshit -- I mean, The Strokes were as annoying to me as Phair was, when they had their day in the sun).
Anyway, it's cool to see this latest effort flame out so mightily, as it might finally bury Phair once and for all! Life's not Phair! Woo hoo! It's over. She's over. It took 17 years, but stick a fork in her: she's done.
