REVIEW: Liz Phair, whitechocolatespaceegg (Matador/Capitol)
- Tracey Bleile
Today's vocabulary word is indulgence. Which is the word that sticks in my brain throughout the 60-plus minutes that is Liz Phair's newest effort, White Chocolate Space Egg. A lot of songs. A lot of songs that just kind of...set their own pace.
Phair has abandoned much of the punchy snottiness that made her stand out on Exile In Guyville, but not her wah-wah pedal, leaving her in a languid groove, and only rarely does it snap the way Exile ever did - but from time to time it works. If you already like her, you're not going to change your mind. It's a grabbag of earnest college-radio pop with thought-provoking lyrics and jangle-buzzy guitar. If you were on the fence about her after her sophomore release, well...the jury might stay out on Egg. With a great deal of production work by Scott Litt, (and back up on one song from three-quarters of R.E.M., and their session musicians) she has appropriated a lot from the talent around her and infused it wherever she can with keyboards, accordions, and utter seriousness wrapped in her rise-above-it attitude.
She has unabashedly dipped her hands into past decades for inspiration here. The quieter songs are psychedelia-edged, including the goofy lead-off title track, and some are downright folky (down to the scratchy chord changes on "Perfect World"). "Ride" takes its surfy chorus from "I Get Around", harmonies and all. Her voice will never be the strongest, but in the mid-to upper-range she still sounds fresh and original. It's that sing-songy slide from up to down, and then down farther still where her voice falters and quite often trails off that gets annoying after you realize that most of Egg's songs are phrased and sung almost exactly the same way. And you can't help but feel like you just know you've heard a lot of the guitar work before...either from her or from 60's and 70's standard folk-rock structure.
The songs that stand out are definitely the ones where she pushes it to be a little noiser and angrier. There's nothing as downright in your face as "Supernova", but she's still exorcising her feelings in dealing with the opposite sex; "Johnny Feelgood" and the first single "Polyester Bride" are next to each other on the album, and are polar ends of the same emotion - don't want to commit at all, when should I commit? Hope with all your hear that the confessional-chatty "What Makes You Happy" gets some airplay - it provides a great fast-slow, jumpy-quiet moment near the end of the disc. Married and a mom now, nevertheless, Phair still has something brewing beneath the surface that hasn't quite boiled over, and she continues to contain it on this release. The snarling of her stream of consiousness is completed belied by the sweetness of the music, but she's dulled the impact of her words this time by padding them with a layer of softness. I think the way to absorb this release is to take in the spirit it was offered; one song at a time for their individual effect. At your own pace.
