All Liz Phair, with lovely score…
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[6.33]
Isabel Cole: First things first: Liz Phair, my wine-sipping aunt with a killer wardrobe, opening a song with “There’s so many ways to fuck up a life” is… the mood to end all moods. With a light ruefulness that never quite tilts into preemptive nostalgia, she lays out both her expertise in performing the part of a woman who’s easy to love and the self-knowledge which has taught her that’s a gig with an expiration date. Her matter-of-fact affect coats her story with a clear-eyed sense of inevitability, making it all the more delicious when at the very end she indulges in a little vocal playfulness at the very moment she reveals that her ostensible gift is also a weapon; a song that sounds like secret self-recrimination closes smirkingly on the idea that at the least, she got what she wanted.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: The counterpart to Phair heir Colleen Green’s “Deeper Than Love“: if “once you get to know me you won’t love me anymore,” why not just ensure the first part never happens? (tapping_head_gif) “Good Side” is still bleak, but bleak disguised with a lot of wistful, faking contentedness until you at least get good at faking it. The arrangement is alt-rock to the point of being almost anachronistic (the drum loop and guitar ripples alone would probably have gotten you a substantial advance in the ’90s), but I have infinite nostalgia for that sound, as does much of my cohort. If only Phair had written that last line of the chorus, the one that’d go with a chord modulation, that it so clearly leads up to; if only she had left the single with whatever side doesn’t include that farty bridge.
[6]
Hazel Southwell: I didn’t know if I wanted, let alone needed, to hear a new Liz Phair single in 2019 but it turns out I very much do, skittering little late 90s record scratch effects and all. Phair’s legacy as an artist is in MUNA’s trauma-bangers but this has all the joy (horror) of a good new Eels track, unlikely to convert anyone new but so well done, from marginalia-doodle lyrics straight out of a mental breakdown board meet to saccharine catchiness keeping it this side of civil.
[8]
Alex Clifton: I keep thinking this is a Neutral Milk Hotel demo that got passed along to someone who can actually sing; I know I’m only thinking that because of those horns in the background, which are the best part of the song. The rest of it is mellow but flies by without really doing much for me. I’m disappointed because Phair’s strength as a songwriter (and performer) has always been the emotion she imbues each song with, but I’m not really getting anything out of this one.
[4]
Alfred Soto: She’s in strong voice, and I can hear the emphatic strum of her electric rhythm guitar — the least praised part of her musicianship. But something’s missing. Where the good-to-great Liz Phair songs left no doubt about how vocal and instrumental jaggedness compensated for narrative lacuna, the gloss affirms the vacuity of the title hook; she doesn’t say anything.
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: Liz Phair is written on a pasteboard, which a little girl carries to a Harry Styles concert. Excited to meet a fellow fan, Harry brings the girl onstage with her dad, and they wave the board as Harry’s band plays them up and Harry gives over to the father, who starts playing acoustic guitar. At the end, Liz pokes her head out of the P and winks at the little girl, which no one else notices.
[7]