Liz Phair at the Commodore

On Friday night, we went to see Liz Phair at the historical Commodore Ballroom. I bought the tickets on a whim earlier in the week, and I guess it’s a reflection of how far this indi-rock goddess has fallen that she couldn’t sell out a 900-seat venue in Vancouver.

For my money, Exile in Guyville is one of the best, most original rock albums of the nineties. On this homage to the Stones’ Exile on Main Street, Phair writes witty lyrics about middle-American nobodies with great pop hooks. Since then, her follow-up albums have been increasingly dissappointing. Her latest release saw her hook with ‘The Matrix’, the songwriting duel behind Avril Lavinge’s debut.

On Friday night, it was pretty easy to tell which songs The Matrix had written. They’re deeply mediocre pop tunes with vague lyrics and some fancy vocal processing. “Red Light Fever”, “Favorite” and “Rock Me” are all pretty awful songs, and a long way from “Fuck and Run” or “Divorce Song”. The one exception from the new album was the song she closed the show with. “HWC” is a jaunty pop song in praise of the beauty benefits of oral sex.

The whole show felt kind of over-produced. I was concerned when I spotted the lack of a microphone stand at stage-centre. Ms. Phair, like Brittany Spears and Madonna, apparently prefers a throat mike. Throat mikes aren’t very rock and roll. This, combined with the constant hot white lights focussed only on her (her band played in a kind of semi-darkness) made the show feel more poppy than hard rock.

Liz Phair’s songs are short. And while I’m the first guy to complain about lengthy instrumental sections in live performances, I wouldn’t have minded if they’d stretched out one or two beyond the two-and-half-minute mark.

Live music is the great equalizer, and a lot of Phair’s songs’ subtleties were last as she raced through them. There were a few highlights, including “Uncle Alvarez” and the aforementioned “Fuck and Run” (which emerged in a segue out of the Cars’ “Just What I Needed”), but she more or less sounded exactly like her CD. And that’s not why I come to a concert. I want to hear the artist push herself–play new material, re-invent old material–basically, surprise me.
Instead, Liz Phair played a terse, poppy 80-minute set (yes, that includes the encore).

I used to think of Liz Phair as a dirtier Sheryl Crowe. Now, tragically, she’s barely a dirtier Avril Lavigne.