It's all about exposure.
Goldfrapp's new release, 'Supernature', is a cut above comparisons of any kind (a tease at the end will turn into a review when I can). They're on the up and going strong.
What if you're no longer sure, but you know you've been very hot and you're grounded for a while?
If you too do songs a cut above the rest and you're honest, you might be called Liz Phair. On the stength of what she's done, 'Somebody's Miracle', coming out next month, has shot pretty close to the top of my wish list.
Lately I've been flying with Liz and one or two other women who write soaring songs with a biting lyrical edge borne aloft on music made to last, sometimes alone, generally with almost irreproachably good bands.
Liz Phair made a name on sex and sensuality, but it's a sensitivity and openness to others -- when she's open to such exposure herself -- that has me hooked, like Heather Nova, another songwriter with a lot to say.
The singers I'm getting to know have little in common but my own pleasure in hanging around with each one for a long while, since the music's good right from the start but the real rewards come with songs that aren't always immediately accessible.
After a cracking 1993 debut, then other albums less well known to me, I've stuck with 'Liz Phair' (Oct 2003), and the more I listen, the more I like it.
Harsh reviews talk about the like of a "crack in a cheery façade" -- it's not just a crack, it's right through the album:
"Holding hands with you, and we're out at night
Got a girlfriend, you say it isn't right
And I've got someone waiting too
This is, this is just the beginning
We're already wet, and we're gonna go swimming
Why can't I breathe whenever I think about you
Why can't I speak whenever I talk about you
It's inevitable, ..."
and she sings how, for her, it's inevitable in 'Why Can't I?', and then there's 'Rock Me' -- "rock me very hard" appeals the upfront cover art, she wears little more than a guitar and does so with a thigh-spread that says what she wants and still sings of getting on much of the eponymous album.
Such sex songs -- a bunch of them, including 'HWC', a free "hot white" ... skin cream not to be taken for more than the randy, I barely dare say "tongue-in-cheek", nonsense it is -- annoy many a professional critic, because Phair in her late 30s, and a single mother, doesn't cut deep.
After all, she's only saying "Come on, guys" herself, so what? But to weighty minds, she thus disappoints very high expectations set by the sharply penned and acute insights of the 1999 'Exile in Guyville', which tore headlong through "niceties" and far less likeable things in people.
So it's deceptively easy to dismiss the lyrical content of her last album as soft fare indeed:
"Even the songs on Liz Phair that could be considered 'shocking' or 'profound' are gratuitous and overdetermined, eschewing the stark and accusatory insights of Exile in favor of pointless f-bombs, manipulative ballads, and foul-mouthed shmeminism."
 That's tough writing from Matt LeMay at Pitchfork, but it's not what I hear myself, while to speak as he does of a "collection of utterly generic rocked-out pop songs" is way over the top.
They're not, they're good songs.
Like I said, it's all about exposure. If LeMay in 2003 says Liz was frank about going for mainstream success, I'll take his word for it. Still, when you get to be a single mum at 32, but a man-eater outlook and raw body language have been your expected "market skills", maybe you start asking nail-biting questions.
Occasionally this 'Liz Phair', settles for the trite -- and with the music that's just fine -- but with a very personal side kept on a much tighter rein than on 'Exile in Guyville'.
'Little Digger', her words for a very small boy's perspective on mum's men: she gets that right, she's not blind to what she's doing and still she'll face up to it and say it. Say it for us, and with the kid:
"You put your trucks up on the bed next to him
So he can get a better look at them, you say
This one's my favorite one, this one you can't have
I got it from my Dad, you say
I got it from my Dad
Now you're thinking little thoughts about it
Taking every inch of him in
What does it mean when something changes how its always been
And in your head you keep repeating the line
My Mother is mine
I've done the damage, the damage is done
I pray to God that I'm the damaged one
In all these grown-up complications that you don't understand..."
It's a beautiful song, rather more than "moderately poignant" as someone said who may not know any single mums, there's a lot of love for the 'Little Digger', and there's regret; and Liz has got a job to do, making good rock albums, taking risks, and even turning a hard time around ... in public. Liz is also measuring loss:
"Gonna take a vacation
Stop chasing what I lack
Am I gonna get blown off
As soon as I get back
On another track
Without you
'Cause I don't have the heart to try
One more false start in life
It's been so hard to get it right...,"
she sings on the penultimate track.
Listening to those albums in tandem, from the smart, feisty lady out to get her way in the world, 'Exile in Guyville, to this is enlightening. To shift back and forth across a full four years' difference in the life of the woman brings more insight into how -- just perhaps, who can say? -- she too thought "Fair enough", ease off; for times they are a-changing and you can hear her changing with them.
 There's no lack of deep feeling for her child, but she still wants the loving herself and will say it, so some find she's vulgar -- when she's blunt -- and she doesn't look for any easy answers.
She wanted a break from the passing of time, that's clear, she's out to let her hair down and she does in a satisfying, good and rich rock album, melodically appealing, punchy, thoroughly enjoyable on the whole and ... I'd guess (and hope) a phase.
I wouldn't fling words like "immature" at a woman headed for the "big four-oh", as some nervously describe it, who'll have a fling with a younger guy, and just funnily compare the ease of a familiar lover to comfortable old underwear in 'Favourite'; there's more heart-searching in this album than immediately meets the ear.
Some found 'Exile in Guyville' shocking for what it sometimes says; moving on, I hear an honest singer out less to work any more by "shock tactics" than to be open about vulnerability. One perspective says to put out a self-named CD means either just starting or trying for a new audience; I hear it more as a stock-taking, it's her "this is me then", without overwhelming herself or us with the introspection. Because still she rocks, very well and her band is right with her.
If people enjoyed being shocked or "offended" because Liz Phair can't share a package deal of social values and turns some of them upside down, then to write her off for easing off and ceasing openly to ask a lot of questions is an unfair dismissal. The questions are there if you listen, along with the cutting wordplay she's good at.
As the Liz Phair site shows, her life is still often a busy time on the road (the second picture, in Atlanta a couple of years back, comes from Concert Shots; the other wasn't credited).
I'm introducing a theme here, singer-songwriters with really quite some bite to their words and engaging in self-exposure as a means of making a living, giving others a good time by doing this.
She's a good intro to such a theme: Liz took a consuming human interest, sex, provided alleged "shock value" with it, because it's not hard to imagine her most virulent critics just find it harder than some to admit what people really yell is "More, give us more!", then gave herself a break for what some hint was a kind of self-satisfaction, aware of her age.
She's done a vulnerable album as a vulnerable woman, but not complacent and so I'm impatient for the next one, and wish her the very best with it..
I wouldn't like to predict who she'll be on it, still herself, I doubt she's suddenly shed the honesty.
That's a theme well worth a closer look, since it's clear a good number of the singers coming up one after another here go far further than many actors do; they've chosen to give people music and much pleasure from it by playing an extremely difficult role, in public, very often on stage: themselves.
zzz
As for 'Supernature' on being lent a copy briefly, it was easy to agree with those who can hear echoes of people as diverse as Kate Bush and Gary Numan (his his NuWorld ... a guy worth a look in here, like Nick Cave and indeed Leonard Cohen).
That's a passing "If you can, do try it" reference, while the home site of the exciting duo, Alison G -- her sophisticated self -- and Will Gregory, the other half, also merits a stop, not just for creepy-crawlies (Goldfrapp; not at work, you'll probably want to turn up what you find there, it's distracting). I look forward to getting into more...
12:06:47 AM link 
|
|
postbox