Liz Phair

This touchstone of the 1990s is a smart, provocative and aesthetically spot-on work from one of the most talented artists of the slacker generation. Phair's Citizen Kane-like debut sketches the fears, wants and bitterness of twentysomething women living in a male-dominated scene with razor-sharp humor and stark honesty. Best college rock album ever.

"I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline," Howlin' Wolf once complained – now
along come Polly Jean Harvey and Liz Phair bearing matches. "Douse hair with gasoline/Set
it light and set it free," Harvey rhapsodizes on "Man-Size," from her second album, Rid of
Me. "I clean the house/I put all your books in an order/Send it up on fire/Death before
dawn," Phair sings on "Canary," one of eighteen tracks on her double-album-leng... More >

She's a rebel, and if all goes well, also a pathfinder, which isn't certain mainly because the acts and attitudes that make her a rebel are so normal. Her number of partners may be over toward the right side of the bell curve. She may have commitment problems. But for at least two decades, bohemian women of a certain age have displayed this much desire, independence, bitchiness, self-doubt, and general weirdness--while continuing to pin down the unmanly emotional apercus that make "Dance of the Seven Veils" and "Divorce Song" so gender-specific. They can behave this way if they want--they're just not supposed to come out of the closet about it. And while Phair knows more than enough about tunes and guitars to challenge the taboo, the weirdness level of her spare, intuitive, insinuating demos-plus is bohemia-specific. Which is apt for sure. But not necessarily pathfinding. (Grade - A)