From: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org (support-system-digest) To: support-system-digest@smoe.org Subject: support-system-digest V8 #136 Reply-To: support-system@smoe.org Sender: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk support-system-digest Saturday, October 15 2005 Volume 08 : Number 136 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Boston Phoenix) part one [Ken] [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Boston Phoenix) part two [Ken] [support-system] Gap Ad ["Katie Brown" ] [support-system] critics suck [Lani Rosen ] [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Boston Globe / Memphis Flyer) [Kenneth Lee Subject: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Boston Phoenix) part one From The Boston Phoenix: (http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/top/documents/05023524.asp) Exiles in rockville Liz Phair and Fiona Apple BY MATT ASHARE Back in August, Liz Phair came through town on what could be described as a goodwill tour. During a two-night stand at the Paradise, she found time to meet with people like me - the critics - in a PR campaign designed to woo the press in advance of "Somebodys Miracle" (Capitol), her new CD. And not just the press: on stage she appeared shoeless, stripped-down both musically and literally, with just an acoustic guitar and a skirt that showed more than enough leg to make the boys up front blush. The set itself was a return to "Guyville" - to many of the songs that had made her the reigning queen of indie-rock back in 93. The effect was much the same as spending an hour chatting with her at the 90 Tremont Hotel bar: she flirted with and seduced the crowd with her down-to-earth chatter, her naked songs, and just enough leg. Earlier that day, the setting may have been different, but Id been subjected to the same charm offensive: she spoke thoughtfully about everything from motherhood to songwriting to the power of MySpace, where you can now sign up to be one of Phairs friends. I was smitten. It would have been difficult to come away from the interview or the show any other way. And smitten is what Phair needed in the wake of her failed stab at a Top 40 breakthrough with her previous album, 2003s "Liz Phair" (Capitol) - a disc that longtime champions of the indie Phair of "Guyville" took to be nothing short of a stab in the back. (Shell be back this Friday, at Avalon, with a full band.) At around the same time, another drama was unfolding around another controversial artist, Fiona Apple. After a six-year absence, Apple had reunited with producer Jon Brion, the architect behind her breakthrough debut, 1996s "Tidal" (Epic), and recorded "Extraordinary Machine", an ambitious new album. Apple, best known as the scantily clad 19-year-old waif crawling around a bathroom floor in the video for her first single ("Criminal") and then commenting "This world is bullshit" when she won an MTV VMA, never struck me as an artist with a rabid cult following. But fans came out of the woodwork to protest when word leaked that Dr. Dres right-hand-man Mike Elizando had been hired to rework "Extraordinary Machine" - especially after the disc itself, or the unmastered Brion album, was leaked online. Whether Epic, concerned about the commercial potential of "EM", forced Apples hand, is irrelevant. To judge from Apples continued friendship with Brion - the DualDisc "EM" includes Apple playfully performing a live acoustic set with him - the ensuing demands for the release of "EM" didnt damage the Apple/Brion bond. And, on October 4, a "new" "EM", sounding very much like the old, hit the streets. To be sure, Apple and Phair are very different artists. Apple rode the post-Tori Women-in-Rock boom of the Lilith Fair 90s to the top of the charts with the help of a video that showed more than just a little leg. Arguments about whether her angst-ridden confessions from the piano were just Tori-lite, and about whether this waifish, Kate Moss-thin teen was a positive role model for young women abounded. Phair, on the other hand, was one of the great underground triumphs of the alternative 90s: her 1993 debut "Exile In Guyville" was at once an indictment of a male-centric Chicago indie scene and a song-by-song answer to the Stoness "Exile on Main St.", though you wouldnt have known it if she hadnt told you. Rather than moving millions of units, it turned Phair into an overnight indie heroine: she injected some much-needed sex and a heavy dose of female attitude into indieville with songs like "Fuck and Run" and became a critics darling. Her lyrics may have opened the door for artists like Alanis Morissette to sing about blow jobs and bitterness. Nobody questioned Phairs integrity; everyone seemed to wonder about Apples. The songs were almost beside the point. Continued in the next email... - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 23:01:14 -0700 From: Kenneth Lee Subject: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Boston Phoenix) part two From The Boston Phoenix: (http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/top/documents/05023524.asp) (continued from previous email) Ten years after "Guyville", having released a couple of decent albums in the interim, Phair pissed off her old fans by reinventing herself as Top 40 fodder on the slicked-up Liz Phair, an album that included - gasp! - material co-written with the song-doctoring Matrix. And, as Phair made the mainstream rounds to chat with everyone from the gals on The View to Leno and Letterman, every interviewer - even the Today Show crew - remembered to use words like "indie" and "mainstream." The comedy of errors reached its zenith when Bob Costas, of all people, called Phair out for "abandoning" her "indie roots". The EPK DVD that came along with advances of "Somebodys Miracle" has an amusing montage of these media encounters. The underlying message is obvious: anyone who ascribes to "Liz Phair abandoned her indie roots on Liz Phair" is no better than Bob Costas and probably has no business writing music criticism. When I interviewed Phair back in August, she was more politic. Liz Phair, she contends, was an experiment - an opportunity for her to rub shoulders with pop stars and get a feel for that side of the biz - just another step in her evolution as an artist. "Im not the Liz Phair of Guyville anymore," she explained. "I dont want to disown that album; it was great. But I was in a totally different place when I wrote those songs. And Im not the kind of person whos happy staying in one place. I need to explore." As unlikely as it may seem, "explore" is a better fit for Apples new album than Phairs, which sounds like a retrenchment for a singer-songwriter who simply wants to be accepted for who she is - a strong, smart, talented artist with a penchant for straightforward guitar pop endowed with catchy choruses, a quirky hook or two, and confessional lyrics drawn from introspection and experience. When, in the opening track, she sings "I saw John/He looked so sad/I want you to know that I feel bad/For not making our dream come true/We had so many dreams me and you," you know theres a John out there somewhere. As in so many of Phairs best songs, a driving backbeat, ringing guitars, and a sunny vocal melody set up a dark punch line in "Leap of Innocence" - "I had so many friends in rehab/A couple who practically died" is one line that interrupts the good, clean vibe of a song that might otherwise be too sentimental. That, in a nutshell, is Somebodys Miracle. Its not the return to Guyville some may have hoped for. But Phairs a single mom living in California, not a struggling Chicago songwriter. "We all shine, shine, shine" may not sound right coming from the same woman who wrote "Fuck and Run," but theres a dark side to "Stars and Planets." Yeah, there probably isnt a song here that the producers of "The O.C." or "Veronica Mars" wouldnt kill for. Strip away the production, though, and there are more than a couple of tracks- "Got My Own Thing" and the Stonesy "Why I Lie" - that would be right at home in "Guyville". "The O.C."s not going have much luck with Fiona Apple. Shes matured into something resembling a jazz singer. Her voice has deepened and the adventurous arrangements on Extraordinary Machine make the most of her growing vocal talents. The disc opens with spare orchestral backing (no drums or guitar, just pizzicato strings and a bell that rings from time to time) that leaves lots of room for that voice to roam. Drums and piano finally kick in on track two, without a trace of the hip-hop Elizando might have brought to the proceedings. There are electronic drums on "Tymps," but mostly Elizando has streamlined the arrangements in a way that accentuates Apples quirks. If Epic thought hed pry a more commercial album out of her, they were mistaken. But, then, thats what Apple shares with Phair - an urge to explore, and the confidence to make the kind of music she wants to make regardless of the implications, commercial or otherwise. Theyre both exiles of a sort, one cursed with having to live up to "Guyville", another doing her best to live down the success of "Tidal". - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:21:20 +0000 From: "Katie Brown" Subject: [support-system] Gap Ad >>>liz's gap ad is on the back cover of the new Jane magazine with Jessica >>>Alba on the front cover.<<< so glad you brought this up because i actually brought in this little Gap booklet thing that was in a magazine someone gave me... This HAS to be old news but the booklet says "Our favorite artists, their favorite songs" and each page of the booklet is the name of the artist with the name of each artist, their favorite song, and their favorite fit in Gap jeans. So for example, Alanis Morissette, Crazy - Seal (lol), Favorite Fit: Curvy Flare. Joss Stone, God Only Knows - The Beach Boys, Favorite Fit: Low Rise Flare. ... and this goes on for a total of 8 artists INCLUDING our own Liz Phair. There is an absolutely adorable picture of her wrapping a jean jacket close - -up around her neck with her eyes half-closed. It's totally sexy but not gratutitous like some of her other recent photos. It says "Liz Phair, Cheek To Cheek - Irving Berlin, Favorite Fit: Straight Boot Cut". but here's the killer. the last page of the booklet it advertises the Gap CD "Favorite Songs" and every single person is covering their favorite song EXCEPT Liz. WTF? and there is even a bonus track of Michelle Branch singing Life on Mars even though her picture is not in the book. Weird. KB ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 09:35:20 -0700 From: Lani Rosen Subject: [support-system] critics suck Those reviews are driving me crazy. I really don't think any of the critics are giving the new album a chance. I think they are all reading each others and copying verbatim. It's pretty annoying. I actually think they want to dislike it. I, on the other hand, am really enjoying it. I still don't own it, I've been listening on the aol cd listening party. I just found a copy of the promo with Cant Get Out on ebay - I got it for $4.00! the shipping is costing me the same as the cd. I almost broke down and bought it on itunes and luckily I held out. I am pissed that you can't get that song as a single song, its pretty obnoxious. I just love Wind and The Mountain. I think its my favorite so far, but still too soon to tell. I'm not crazy about the lyrics to Leap of Innocence - especially the rehab part. It just doesn't flow. I love the chorus, I'm so mad at her choice of the rest of the lyrics!! it could have been an awesome song in my opinion. did anyone go to her last few shows? didn't she start touring again? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:30:20 -0700 From: Kenneth Lee Subject: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Boston Globe / Memphis Flyer) From The Boston Globe: (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/10/14/new_on_disc/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Living+/+Arts+News) Liz Phair "SOMEBODY'S MIRACLE" Capitol Longtime fans may gripe that indie princess Liz Phair has betrayed them by outgrowing the defiance that marked her crackling debut, "Exile in Guyville". And her fifth full-length album, "Somebody's Miracle", is indeed glossy and pop-oriented. But Phair seems just as independent as she ever was. Her new album began as a song-by-song response to Stevie Wonder's 1976 album "Songs in the Key of Life", and Phair delivers it with familiar take-it-or-leave-it bravado. The off-kilter melodies and raw vocals that made her early work such a strange, intimate pleasure are smoothed out with a pop sheen, as they were on her 2003 self-titled album. But her dark humor and candid approach to sex, love, and self-deception are back. There are a few flat moments, but many others shine. Album opener ''Leap of Innocence" is a rocker with a loping beat, and ''Got My Own Thing" swaggers. ''Closer to You" is an expansive love song that boasts winsome vocals and warm acoustic guitar. Wrestling with the effects of age and experience seems much braver than simply chasing youthful glory. Phair is at Avalon tonight. SARAH TOMLINSON ***** From The Memphis Flyer: (http://www.memphisflyer.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A10346) Plain and simple: Liz Phair's newest transforms the generic. BY CHRIS HERRINGTON Like Bob Dylan before her, Liz Phair is a lot smarter than the audience she supposedly betrayed through the embrace of dread pop music. But unlike Dylan, Phair's greatest music did indeed precede her alleged betrayal -- which means not just the deathless touchstone "Exile in Guyville" (which I do adore) but the crafty, colossally underrated songwriter's exercise "Whitechocolatespaceegg", which felt like a more likely career model. The moment of negation -- 2003's "Liz Phair" (which, by the way, included a divorced-mommy song Tammy Wynette could never have topped) -- wasn't quite as plain as detractors claimed. Phair's ostensible goal was to master the generalities of chart-pop without losing her personality in the process. But aside from the pitch-perfect sneak-attack single "Why Can't I," she was too self-conscious about the conceit to totally pull it off. "Somebody's Miracle" is plainer than "Liz Phair", but also purer. Outside of a tough alcoholic's lament ("Table for One") that could be an "Exile" update, the surfaces here are uniformly generic. Sometimes, like on the surging "Count On My Love," the songs are all surface. More often, Phair sneaks in small details that transform the meaning of the otherwise moon-June-spoon generalities. "Leap of Innocence" is a wistful, evenhanded remembrance of a past love, but you find out two-thirds of the way through that the affair was extramarital. "Lost Tonight" could be Mandy Moore until the very adult, very carnal, very self-aware "Yeah, I'm not that kind of girl/But I could be for you." And best of all is the paired "Somebody's Miracle" and "Got My Own Thing." On the former, she aches for the forever and ever amen most indie-rock Peter Pans can't conceive. On the latter, she erases lingering self-pity with an acknowledgement that someone as smart and beautiful as Liz Phair always has the upper-hand. - -- Chris Herrington Grade: B+ - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:21:59 -0700 From: Kenneth Lee Subject: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Slate) From Slate: (http://slate.msn.com/id/2128023/): Liz Phair Is her new album a return to form? By Douglas Wolk It sometimes seems that Liz Phair has spent half her career running away from her strengths as an artist. Her first album, 1993's "Exile in Guyville", was a near-perfect debut, showcasing a songwriter with a thoroughly original style and scathing insights into relationships. It's also cast a shadow over everything she's done since. For the last decade, Phair has been alternately trying to approximate what made "Guyville" so special and rebelling against it. Her 2003 effort, "Liz Phair", was one of those attempts at rebellion. The result was a slick, airbrushed record that pandered to contemporary hit radio, played up Phair's sexy bad-girl image, and dismissed virtually all of the psychological and musical complexity that made her songs and performances so entrancing in the first place. Her new album, "Somebody's Miracle" (Capitol), is something of a retrenchment, one part taut songwriting and two parts radio-formula-retreading mush. The production that frames Phair's inalienable gifts as a melodist is the kind of lavish, high-budget, post-Eagles rock that she's gravitated toward for the last decade, and this time it mostly works. (Too bad she's still trying to sing like Sheryl Crow. With her unavoidably thin, girlish voice, Phair doesn't have the chops for it.) The album's musical high point, "Count On My Love," has an arrangement that Journey or Pat Benatar would've coveted in the '80s, complete with a hyperdramatic bridge and breakdown. The problem with this song, as with so many others here, is its dreadfully dopey lyrics. "You can count on my love/ With me you'll feel protected/ And you'll never be rejected/ Count on my love," Phair emotes. If this doesn't strike you as Phair talking down to her audience, compare it with, say, the run-on blurt that opened "Guyville": "I bet you fall in bed too easily with the beautiful girls who are shyly brave and you sell yourself as a man to save but all the money in the world is not enough." That's a great line, and it gets better and stranger the longer you look at it: "Shyly brave"? What's that? "A man to save" following "sell yourself"-are we talking about an emotional rescue or dirty money? And who's this "I," and what exactly does she want from "you"? What practically everybody missed about Phair's early records was how much of the emotional depth of her lyrics derived from her penchant for assuming characters-she liked playing the "Is it me or isn't it?" game, and she also liked playing the "This is so not me" game. ("Guyville"'s devastating "Divorce Song," for example, was recorded before Phair was married; if she'd released it after her divorce, everyone would have heard the song as autobiographical self-expression.) In her way, she was as much of a chameleon as the early David Bowie-a theatrical songwriter who paid attention to the details that made her personae believable. On "Somebody's Miracle", Phair is still trying on roles. A couple of the songs have characters who go so far as to mention that they're men: "I wanna live that life when I could say people had faith in me/ I still see that guy in my memory," notes the alcoholic narrator of "Table for One." Another male persona has disappeared from the new album-twice over. Advance review copies of "Somebody's Miracle" included a pumped-up I-hate-my-job rocker called "Can't Get Out of What I'm Into" a song that dates back to Phair's pre-"Guyville" demo tapes. The "Miracle" version's last verse begins, "The things I have to do would make a slut blush blue/ But I can't get out of what I'm into/ I figure two more years and I'll go back to school/ But I can't get out of what I'm into." On the ancient demo tape, the song had the title "Gigolo," and the line ran, "I figure two more years and I'll go back to queers"-which changes the whole meaning of the song. It's understandable that Phair would back off from the original slur, but the change has also made the song less theatrical (and funny) and easier to interpret as an autobiographical plaint about being sick of the music business. (When she wrote it, she wasn't even in the music business.) In any case, "Can't Get Out ... " is gone from the album now, banished to iTunes bonus-track status. In its place is a dire ballad called "Closer To You," on which Phair intones moon-June-spoon rhymes like, "What you've got in your heart is enough for me to start/ Givin' up holes in my soul, I don't need to rock and roll." It's not just banal, it's nonspecific-an attempt to be universal that ends up being merely vague. Even worse is the lighters-in-the-air single, "Everything to Me," a plea to an inattentive lover: "Do you really know me at all?/ Would you take the time to catch me if I fall?" In case he doesn't notice that he and Phair are "left with nothing but a shadow of a doubt," she hauls in an enormous string section and does her best impression of Shania Twain hurling the Ten Commandments from the mountaintop. Phair's complaints were a lot more effective back when she was muttering that she wanted "all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas." Still, there are a couple of smart, cutting songs here. "Leap of Innocence," despite its non sequiturial hook ("I wanna make a leap of innocence to you"), has Phair noting how a love affair's social context curdled-"I had so many friends in rehab/ A couple who practically died"-and then offhandedly half-swallowing the crucial detail that "my mistake was being already married." "Why I Lie" is even better, a nonapology apology that's yanked along by an inside-out variation on the "Brown Sugar" riff. "If you ask me why I hurt you, I don't understand it/ It's a special combination, predatory instinct and simple ill will," Phair snaps, and follows it with a bit that nobody else could get away with as a chorus: "I would give some thought to it if I thought that it might do me"-here a breath, and then at the very bottom of her range-"some good." (When she gets back to the chorus later on, she precedes it with a venom-dripping "whoa, mama.") As a song and a performance, it's worthy of "Guyville". That's not what she's aspiring to any more, but it's the best thing anyone could say about her work anyway. - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 21:48:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Emil Breton Subject: Re: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Slate) Here I thought the Pitchfork review was the best we were gonna see. I don't think I've ever seen any discussion of the opening lines of 6'1" before -- at least not in a real publication -- if Slate can be called that. And he totally nailed "Can't Get Out of What I'm Into" (which is SO not worth hunting down, folks). Wow. Really great review. Anyway, I know there are a lot of old-school fans out there who have yet to chime in on Somebody's Miracle. You know who you are. Come forward and answer my plea. Make that leap of innocence. Here, I'll get you started: The new album is the best album she's put out since Liz Phair. Discuss. Emil - --- Kenneth Lee wrote: > From Slate: > (http://slate.msn.com/id/2128023/): > > Liz Phair > Is her new album a return to form? > By Douglas Wolk __________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 00:08:20 -0500 From: "sandra" Subject: [support-system] I am LIKING this new Liz Seriously, what's up with all these negative reviews? They're harsh! Critics were nicer on the last album, and I was no big fan of that -- understatement, actually. But I've heard the first half of this one and so far I'm loving it. Fine, we can blame it on the mom factor (that would be me), but "Somebody's Miracle" makes me cry ... it's not only the lyrics but also her wistful voice. She kills me when she talks about marriage and divorce. "Stars and Planets" is catchy and brilliant -- of course Liz would rhyme the word "ingenue" in her opening couplet -- as is "Got My Own Thing." That chorus is so singable. She's being a master lyricist, the Liz I know and love. I'm not that crazy about the single, but eh, what else is new. sandra who, for anyone who's counting, has two kids now -- wilder cash is almost a year old ------------------------------ End of support-system-digest V8 #136 ************************************