Funstyle – Liz Phair … wish you were here?

(SOUNDLUST REVIEW) — So as I was writing this review I fell asleep and dream-pictured Liz Phair, hands over bent-up knees, her face large-lipped, large-headed, floating above a small-bodied cartoon caricature, talking to people on stage with her. Not her band but fans, who’d crowded into this little anonymous, low-ceilinged place to listen to her play. “Normally we’d play packed,” she said, “but this one’s for the musicians and the band.” And then I woke up.

Tempted to say, Funstyle – it’s $5.99, just try the fucking thing. You get high-quality lossless mp3s and music that hasn’t been pasteurized.

Listening to Liz Phair here brings alive so many female music references. Madonna screaming, I have a reservation off of “Act of Contrition” started ringing in my ears, seconds after the bass hit of the amazing “Smoke” started.

Too, Janis Joplin’s rage at the world. Bjork’s loopiness at her most inspired and lucid, Tori’s intensity and obscurity. And Kim Carnes: She’ll turn the music on you / You won’t have to think twice / She’s pure as New York snow /She’s got Bette Davis eyes. / And she’ll tease you / She’ll unease you /All the better just to please you / She’s precocious and she knows / Just what it takes to make a pro blush / She’s got Greta Garbo stand-off sighs / She’s got Bette Davis eyes.

And, well, you know listening to Phair you’ll get her throaty voice. A sound full of resonant scratchy timbre that always pushed her past twee. Distinctive, character-filled. Can carry anything. She delivers malice aforethought with a smiling sneer, can turn on the innocence while gently but firmly, sliding cold steel inside you. Give me sharp wit over all the other shit. Anger in song, raged or quiet — almost pure ecstasy.

I wet my jeans listening to Funstyle.

As I always asks when someone inspires me, where the shit is this coming from? If all this obscure, random yet beautiful sound just flows from her au naturel – I love her more. There’s the ripe ballad-folk of “You Should Know Me” and “Miss September,” delicious hilarity on “Smoke” and “U Hate It”, “Bollywood” and “Beat Is Up”. That fine line between pretentious, self-indulgent and art? Phair always stays on the right side, while simultaneously redefining it.

Coming from a current empty place in the music landscape, this whole album refreshes since it acts as a fairly complete introduction to Liz Phair; her attitudes, her way of thinking, her pissed offedness, and, thankfully, her humor to get through life. Because all of this is so fresh, because it’s raw and imediate, this could bring a whole new wave of fans. There’s heavy, regular calming injections of humble self-deprecation — “You held my hair as I puked, oh, everywhere” — clearly she wasn’t one to believe the early hype of her career.

This you would know all the way from the Girly Sound genesis. In “California.” A young bull talks to an old bull.

From her Website, explaining her approach to “where she’s at.”

You were never supposed to hear these songs. These songs lost me my management, my record deal and a lot of nights of sleep. Yes, I rapped one of them. I’m as surprised as you are. But here is the thing you need to know about these songs and the ones coming next: These are all me. Love them, or hate them, but don’t mistake them for anything other than an entirely personal, un-tethered-from-the-machine, free for all view of the world, refracted through my own crazy lens. This is my journey. I’ll keep sending you postcards.

I happened to listen Slate.com’s “Cultural Gabfest” podcast before listening to Funstyle. I’ve been enjoying their take on some things but their reaction was more typical than not and disgustingly narrow-minded. I only knew this after downloading the fucking thing, for $5.99! Ironic, considering Phair’s verbal backlash to being accepted only in a certain way. Apparently this is Phair’s second or possibly third career suicide. Which you would think was impossible. They, as others did, describe Funstyle as a mess, a horrible white-indie-chick-tries-rap shitstain sadness to what had gone before in her career.

I wasn’t proud of it but the whole “traffic slows to watch the accident” rubberneck effect was in effect.

Is the rap on Bollywood the finest thing put to electronic “pianer”? Nope. Is it the worst? Nuh-uh. The delivery brought Blondie’s “Rapture” to mind – slow with attitude. Who on the Slate team decided any comparison to clueless clown Al Yankovic made sense? Or that speculation that she was being intentionally bad and commercial as a statement had any hook to reality?

Anyone who didn’t take “Bollywood” as a shit-stirring wry riff, wasn’t paying attention. And no, the whole album isn’t rap, which is the impression you can walk away with if you don’t just fucking download the thing, for $5.99!

(5 out of 5)

______
The Songs
Satisfied
Smoke
Bollywood
You Should Know Me
Miss September
My My
Oh, Bangladesh
Bang! Bang!
Beat Is Up
And He Slayed Her
U Hate It

Total time: 40:00