Hometown: Chicago, IL
Debut: 1993

Personnel:
Liz Phair -vocals, guitar, piano, synthesizer, other stuff
backed by various others...

Bands in the family :
Brad Wood, Girlysound, Come, Uptighty, Ashtray Boy, Urge Overkill, Ben Lee, Material Issue, Jim Ellison

Notes:
Liz Phair started making her four-track cassette tapes while at Oberlin College in the early '90s under the name Girlysound. On her first Matador album, Exile In Guyville, she took on the Rolling Stones and all the guys in the Wicker Park, Chicago rock scene, emerging victorious on the cover of Rolling Stone under the banner "A Star is Born." Exile was a critical success, ranking among the top albums of 1993 in every major music publication. Heralding a different kind of sex-positive woman's rock music, Liz Phair released her sophmore effort, Whip Smart, which took the woman once best known for singing "I want to be your blowjob queen" in a droning round into the Billboard Top 30. "Supernova" became a good old-fashioned hit, and Whip-Smart soon became the biggest selling album in Matador history, though it was received with less enthusiasm than the debut. In the four years Phair's fans waited for the release of Whitechocolatespaceegg, their heroine scrapped recording sessions with R.E.M. producer Scott Litt, got married, and had a son. Despite her well-documented bouts of stage fright, Phair packed her suitcase and joined the Lilith Fair in 1998 and again in 1999, as well as headlining her own three-month jaunt, later -- somewhat ironically -- opening for Alanis Morissette. Phair's next album is scheduled for a 2000 release.

Links:
Liz Phair Mothership
We Love Liz Phair

The Slick Divide: pics, news, lyrics and more

Liz goes retro kung fu for her Juvenilia cover art, a pose that befits this return to her early recordings. The EP features the single "Jealousy" from Whip-Smart, packaged with seven rare or hard to find tunes. Striking in its breadth, the recording takes a backward-chronological trip, ultimately revealing where Phair started and where she ended up.

Juvenilia is a noteworthy release for those with no exposure to Phair's early recordings. The primary block of songs are five tracks culled from material Liz recorded in college under the guise Girlysound. Many of these tracks had already been widely bootlegged, which may make Phair-philes scratch their heads as to why these recordings in particular received official release. Very much the precursor to the lo-fi sound and obscene lyrics that defined Exile In Guyville, what other woman would have the audacity to have two songs ("California" and "South Dakota") placed back to back, that reference drunken cow-fucking with a straight-face? All five songs primarily rely on Phair's de-tuned guitar and laconic vocals.

The additional tracks are one-off recordings with very different tonalities. The piano-driven "Animal Girl" is a departure from Phair's usual bluntness and borders on sounding pretty. However, it sounds downright gloomy when compared to the Chrissie Hynde-like jaunt that Phair takes with Jim Ellison and Material Issue in covering the '80s new wave, cheese song, "Turning Japanese." These two tracks add diversity to the EP, playing it straight for one song and lacing another with bitter irony. While "Jealousy" has double the texture of the Girlysound tracks, these two more any other tracks exhibit the distance that Phair has musically traveled from those early garage tape days. If Liz does it for you, search high and low for this EP.

If you like Liz Phair, check out:
Liz Phair Exile In Guyville
Liz Phair Whip-Smart
Liz Phair Whitechocolatespaceegg
PJ Harvey Rid Of Me
The Pretenders The Pretenders
Tracy Bonham The Burden Of Being Upright

-- Pierre Stefanos

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