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Also this issue: The Art of Rock 'n' Roll Beat Box The Real 24 Hour Party People Rock the Mic Tour Blistered in the Sun Orchestra Baobab Singapore Sling The Fall |
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July 3- 9, 2003
music
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Long live the blowjob queen
What happened to Liz Phair? She grew up. Liz Phair (Capitol) shows signs of aging. Maturity? On "Little Digger," Phair hopes her 6-year-old isn’t scarred by his mom’s lifestyle. Midlife crisis? On "Rock Me," she’s a player with a thing for a gamer several years her junior. "Mature" themes? Three letters: "H.W.C."
Every few years, Phair makes an album that's not Exile in Guyville, and the knives come out. The backlash started with Guyville's follow-up, Whip-Smart, and common wisdom holds that it's all been downhill. To listen to 1998's whitechocolatespaceegg is to know that's not true. Phair's early work was a revelation to fan boys who had never gotten close enough to a real live girl to know what tawdry thoughts go through our minds, but whitechocolatespaceegg elevated rock lyrics with nuanced narratives of mother-daughter fights about men and a marriage strained by the responsibilities of parenthood. The fan boys didn't buy it; maybe they thought ignoring it would make Phair go away, or at least turn back into the cool single chick they had fallen for.
Phair's single again, all right, but like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, she's not going to be ignored, even if that means hooking up with the Matrix, the team that produced Avril Lavigne -- the sonic equivalent of boiling a bunny. The resulting radio-friendly gloss is an easy target, but it doesn't begin to justify the abuse heaped upon Liz Phair. For one thing, the group assists on just four of the album's 14 songs, including "Extraordinary," a strong candidate for best summer jam.
The five that Michael Penn produced are unfussy -- if lyrically uneven -- adult contemporary tunes. (Growing up isn't all good.) That's low-balling it for Phair, but it's far from the disaster Pitchfork, with its 0.0 rating, would have you believe it is.
Truth is, the fan boys hate Liz Phair for all the wrong reasons. Correlating to The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street gave Guyville a gimmick that record geeks could cream over, but Phair's concomitant stage fright (which Lilith Fair helped her to overcome) and lines like "I want to be your blowjob queen" and "I just want your fresh young jimmy/ Cramming slamming ramming in me" made her submissive enough to seduce a whole alternative nation of virgins who took that "your" too literally. Ten years later, Phair doesn't just want it anymore -- she's gotta have it. "Give me your hot white cum," she demands on the album's catchiest cut as a happy harmonica drowns out the groans of horrified superannuated fan boys who are less spunky than they used to be.
Barely legal girls have a certain appeal, 26-year-old women have other charms and Phair, at 36, has learned a new set of tricks. And she's finding that -- aside from the not inconsiderable attraction of amassing a larger record collection -- men pushing 40 aren't any more evolved than they were at 20. (Unless hair in all the wrong places counts.) So y'all can keep up your Guyville circle jerk while Liz has some fun with young dudes who appreciate a hot mom. She's not talking to you anymore. You know, she never really was.
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