Nom de Plume

For those of you not in the know, I chose my blogger name because I'm a HUGE HUGE HUGE fan of Liz Phair. If you've never heard her music before, please, in the name of all that is good and holy, go listen to her. She rarely disappoints.

Liz's 1st three CD's, "Exile in Guyville", "Whip-Smart" and "Juvenilia", came out on the great and mighty independent label Matador Records. The sound was stripped down, raw, she swore a lot, and at the risk of sounding like a music critic cliche, the lyrics were confessional style. Liz was the cool indie queen of Chicago.

Then there was a long 3 year period before I could purchase "whitechocolatespaceegg" in 1998. This time around Liz had gone to Capital Records, the big boys. I could tell there was some subtle changes to this record but it was still Liz and she was still an amazing song writer.

Then Liz went all quiet until 2003 when she released her self titled album, though she not so secretly refers to it as the "Liz Phair: Back Slash". This was my least favourite album, too polished, too slick and too many other song writers collaborating w/ Liz. There are some tracks on the CD that I absolutely refuse to listen to, very sad. But it was during this time I got a chance to see Liz live for the 1st time. And funnily enough, she didn't perform too many songs off of "Back Slash". She was stellar, out of this world live. Liz came out in this tiny black negligee and this big old guitar and blew me away!

Then I fell back in love w/ "Somebody's Miracle". A quiet, mostly acoustic CD. It was adult, witty and a wee bit somber. Unfortunately, because of poor sales, Liz was dropped by her record label.

The other day I was tooling around on Wikipedia, it's pretty scary to get stuck in wiki-hole, and found Liz had released her latest album in July of this year on her website. "Funstyle" is a return of her wry, snarky, indie sound. Point of fact, it reminds me of Beck. Check it out, everyone loves free downloads.

I'll leave you w/ some words "And that's what this game is all about..."