Hometown: Chicago via Winnetka, IL (born New Haven, CT)
Debut: 1993

Personnel:
revolving, including Brad Wood and Casey Rice who worked with Liz on Exile... and Mike Mills and Peter Buck of R.EM. Touring band includes Velvet Crush drummer Ric Menck.

Bands in the family :
Come's Chris Brokaw was responsible for getting her Girlysound tapes to Matador.

Notes:
Liz Phair started making her four-track cassette tapes while at Oberlin College in the early '90s under the name Girlysound. On her first Matador album, Exile In Guyville, she took on the Rolling Stones and all the guys in the Wicker Park, Chicago rock scene, emerging victorious on the cover of Rolling Stone under the banner "A Star is Born." Exile was a critical success, ranking among the top albums of 1993 in every major music publication. Heralding a different kind of sex-positive woman's rock music, Liz Phair released her sophmore effort, Whip Smart, which took the woman once best known for singing "I want to be your blowjob queen" in a droning round into the Billboard Top 30. "Supernova" became a good old-fashioned hit, and Whip-Smart soon became the biggest selling album in Matador history, though it was received with less enthusiasm than the debut. In the four years Phair's fans waited for the release of Whitechocolatespaceegg, their heroine scrapped recording sessions with R.E.M. producer Scott Litt, got married, and had a son. Despite her well-documented bouts of stage fright, Phair packed her suitcase and joined the Lilith Fair in 1998 and again in 1999, as well as headlining her own three-month jaunt, later -- somewhat ironically -- opening for Alanis Morissette. Phair's next album is scheduled for a 2000 release.

Links:
Liz Phair Mothership
We Love Liz Phair

The Slick Divide: pics, news, lyrics and more

Writers will be quoting lyrics from the soon-to-be misread (to success) would-be first single "Johnny Feelgood", so I won't. Because like Exile In Guyville's oft-quoted "Flower", ("I want to be your blow-job queen"), to do so would fail to represent the whole picture that Liz Phair never fails to deliver.

If Exile was a feminist companion piece to the Stones' experience on Main Street, a shoulder to lean on for so many would-be Morrisettes and outspoken women trying to find their own sense of girl power in bad boy rock culture, and Whip Smart heralded emancipation from male-identification, then Whitechocolatespaceegg is a personal road which bypasses marginalization, stereotypes and expectations.

The actual single, "Polyester Bride" is radio friendly, sure, with an extra chorus thrown in for good measure, but the portrait she paints is exquisite, perfect pop story-telling, as our protagonist asks her bartending friend whether she should "bother dating unfamous men." Other treatises include "Love is Nothing" ("like they say"), and a third-person rumination on family honor, disappointment and ghosts in "Uncle Alvarez". On "Go On Ahead," she revealingly cites the difficulties of marriage and motherhood.

The amount of ground covered in terms of subject matter and style (including a stab at electronica) meshes to become surprisingly cohesive, and Phair's trademark intimacy survives commercial production values.

Who knew Liz Phair would become a one-woman Tin Pan Alley? In '94, she claimed, "I want to be a part of what girl rock was, circa 1994...`Girl rock arises'. I want to be part of that." Whitechocolatespaceegg secures that status and more. Although the dippy title refers to a dream during her pregnancy, being a mom and wife does not dull the sharpness of her musical wit. Demarginalized, domesticated Liz still rocks.

If you like Liz Phair, check out:
Liz Phair Exile In Guyville
Liz Phair Whip-Smart
Liz Phair Juvenilia
Elvis Costello Trust
Spinanes Arches and Aisles
Joni Mitchell Don Juan's Reckless Daughter

psst...you might wanna check out our indie rock abode for more features on (guess what) indie rock bands.

-- Cyndi Elliott