Review #56: Exile In Guyville, Liz Phair
#56: Exile In Guyville, Liz Phair
Look, I may be a Fake Music fan, but I have Riot Grrrl credibility.
For those who don’t know, Riot Grrrl is the feminist movement that happened analogous to grunge, but it was much cooler than grunge because they were women. It is not “Riot Girl,” and it is blasphemous to spell it that way.
Not that I need to over defend myself, but believe me when I say that I have earned my Riot Grrrl card. I’ve come to blows over Courtney Love’s significance and innocence; I read Girls to the Front by Sarah Marcus shortly after it came out; and I had tickets to the now-canceled Bikini Kill tour last November. :(
So when this Liz Phair album came on, I was a tiny bit shocked at myself for never having heard of her. Liz Phair is an angry woman with a raspy voice and very dreamy guitar effects. How had I never encountered her before?! I wasn’t even sure I’d ever heard her name!
My roommate, who also has a Riot Grrrl card (I’ve seen it), also confessed that she hadn’t ever heard of Phair before some old guy asked if she’d heard of her before. We’ll be turning in our cards at the end of the week.
FAVORITE SONGS:
“6’1” ” — Man, the worst thing about being a girl is the height disadvantage.
“Help Me Mary” — They play me like a pitbull in a basement. Wow, I know how THIS feels, too.
“Glory” — Oh wow this song is dirty.
“Dance of the Seven Veils” — Johnny, my love, get out of the business. Is this is the anti- “Johnny B. Goode”?
“Never Said” — This one is the second-catchiest. Liz Phair is the coolest!
“Soap Star Joe” — I know guys exactly like this, heroes in a long line of heroes. Good thing they have Liz Phair to put them in their place.
“F*** and Run” — This is the first-catchiest. Also the sweetest song, somehow. I want a boooyfriend.
“Girls! Girls! Girls!” — Well, as far as songs titled “Girls, Girls, Girls”, this is a good one.
“Divorce Song” — This is the most poetic — and it’s very cool and transgressive to write about divorce at all. Also, I looked it up — this song came out in ’93, but she wasn’t even married until ’95. And she wasn’t divorced until 2001. Do you think she listened to her own divorce song when she got divorced?
“Shelter” — You know, Liz Phair looks a lot like Elizabeth Wurtzel — who I just learned died last year! RIP.
“Flower” — Aw yeah, what a disgusting song I love it.
“Stratford-On-Guy” — Oh fun, a song about being on an airplane! Songs like this always make me want to be on an airplane. (Or maybe I was just so freaking tired of being in my car.)
LEAST FAVORITE SONGS:
“Canary” — I hate the lyrics to this one so much. But the piano is pretty.
“Strange Loop” — This one just made me bored. Maybe this is why I haven’t heard of Liz Phair — she’s so gosh darn indie. Plus there’s a minute of silence at the end. Stop wasting my time!
IS RS FULL OF IT?
No. Once again, I am the one who is shown to be full of it. I am a fake music fan, a fake feminist, and Liz Phair is my new deity.
