I don't have many female artists in my collection. I don't know why. I'm not conscious of any particular animus against female singers or songwriters. I like the way women sing. My wife sings beautifully at church, and she's not even in the choir.
But when it comes to women in pop music, I usually find myself underwhelmed to actively irritated. Bjork? Dork. Madonna? Don't wanna. Fiona Apple? Old Crabapple. And I can keep doing that.
Nor did the Riot Grrrl movement ever do anything for me. I'm sorry, but listening to ladies screech their victimhood while pretending to parody rock's macho stud postures is nowhere near as clever or transgressive as everyone seems to have thought.
But I do dig some women rockers. We'll be meeting Chrissie Hynde soon, and I can't think of a single reason anyone wouldn't like Joan Jett. And this particular album has beat the odds to become something I actually put into the rotation.
I recall a whole slew of rockin' chicks in the early-to-mid 90's, pouring out their guts to power chords. There was Meredith Brooks (I'm sorry, I forgot everything after you said you were a bitch), Joan Osborne (God was one of us. Got nailed to a tree. I'm almost positive someone wrote it down), Tracy Bonham (EVERYTHING'S FIIIIIIIINE! I HAD A COOOOOOLD, BUT I HAD SOME CHICKEN NOODLE SOOOOUUUUP AND I'M BETTER NOW! HOW'S YOU'RE SCIATICAAAAAAAA?), the agony that was Sixpence None The Richer (the band that first made me hate bad band names), and the grandmammy of them all, Alannis Jagged Little Morrisette. I disliked all of them to one degree or another (the only Morrisette song I ever liked was "Hand in My Pocket").
So for most of the 1990's, I paid no attention to Liz Phair, no matter how sterling her reputation amid the rock-crit cognoscenti. Then, about a year and a half ago, I bought the wife Exile at an FYE Going-Out-Of-Business Sale (I am officially not cool). She didn't like it too much, and I was supposed to get rid of it. Instead, I listened to it. And against my instincts, I started to like it.
There's nothing eye-opening here. It's spare guitar, careful backing rhythmns, and vocals, which shift abruptly from croon to yowl to everything in between. And it's a 180 from what every grrrl-rocker was doing then. Instead of trying to clang out the most HARRRD-CORE RAWK EVERRRR, Liz throws out her entire mojo with practiced nonchalance and a fuck-you laid-backedness.
So the fact that I can't parse what exactly she's on about most of the time (you're just a what in springtime? I can rent you by the hour? What does that mean?) doesn't matter a damn. What matters is that she's one of the few from that era who's doing something that I don't instantly understand and grow tired of within a minute's exposure. Every time I listen to this album, I hear new things in it, and like it a little more.
So for once the cognoscenti were right, and I was wrong. I'm not going to ask what this means about my wife.
No comments:
Post a Comment