"That's what good about [this album]: it's as exuberant, irreverent, and exciting as any other bubblegum pop, defiantly silly and shallow, but also deliriously hooky . . . these are terrific, addictive pop songs that are harder and tougher yet feel fresher and lighter than her big hits from [her last album]. . . . True, this is far from deep, but [her last album] proved that . . . deep . . . is . . . dull" - the Allmusic Guide.
Quiz: does this 4.5 star review refer to Liz Phair's self-titled album or Avril Lavigne's The Best Damn Thing?
Considering the title of this post, you've probably already guessed the answer--Lavigne--but it is somewhat staggering to read this review after reading what Allmusic had to say about Phair's album: criticizing Phair's use of Lavigne's production team The Matrix (on 4 tracks), they castigate her album for "delivering music that not just fits comfortably with Lavigne's, but follows her sounds and stance, right down to the insipid lyrics."
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2.5 stars) makes the same point: "The unimaginative production--including lacquered contributions from Avril Lavigne's studio gurus, the Matrix--embraces the pop-rock formulas Phair once gleefully subverted" (p. 634).
And yet, Lavigne's three albums all received relatively positive reviews--65, 68, and 66 on Metacritic to Liz Phair's 40 (including a scathing 0 review from Pitchfork). The overwhelming disdain for this album as having come from a supposed indie rocker like Phair makes the actual criticisms almost beside the point. What's going on is obvious: critics don't actually have a problem with Avril Lavigne or pop music, but simply cannot stand the idea that Liz Phair, their indie goddess, might want to make music like Lavigne.
I hope you know where this is going. All the pieces in this series have made the same point: whether it's the Rolling Stones, Husker Du, the Traveling Wilburys, or John Lennon, the first step of evaluating an album seemingly out of place in an artist's catalog is to completely ignore the name on the front of the record.
Because, ignoring the name on the CD, Liz Phair is a tremendous mainstream pop-rock record, many times better than anything Avril, Britney, Shakira, or even Pink has been able to come up with. If Avril Lavigne had released Liz Phair, the praise for her new found depth and even hooks would have been overwhelming.
Not the least reason for this is that The Matrix actually worked on less than a third of the album--just the four big singles ("Why Can't I?", "Extraordinary", "Favorite", and "Rock Me"). The bulk of the album is taken up by the much more subtle production, and much better songwriting of Michael Penn and Liz Phair herself, including the album's four best songs, "My Bionic Eyes," "Firewalker" (produced by Phair), "It's Sweet" and "Little Digger" (produced by Penn).
"My Bionic Eyes" and "Firewalker" are Phair's preemptive rebuttals to the critics. In "Firewalker" she takes on the complaints about her change in musical direction: "My hopes are like embers lying around inside a firebed and / Your mind is a firewalker, it steps on them like they are dead but / I can grow / In spite of all you know / You might not recognize me tomorrow"--a great point (critics tend only to want artists to "grow" in a very particular direction that they're comfortable with) tied to a surprising metaphor and lovely melody.
"My Bionic Eyes," on the other hand, puts the lie to the complaints of "insipid lyrics" (Allmusic) and "Cringe-inducing come-ons lard songs that belie Phair's strengths as a lyricist" (Rolling Stone), as well as Allmusic's age-ist remark that her lyrics sound "painfully trite coming from a 36-year-old woman": instead, she explicitly addresses the supposedly shocking idea of a 36-year-old on the singles scene with another brilliant metaphor: over a menacing, minor-chord riff, Phair sings about "hynotizing" men with her "bionic eyes," obviously the only way an old lady like Phair could attract a man.
The song is full of these jabs at the public's disgust at older women, especially in the chorus: "As I got older I had to step out of the lines / And make up my own mind / As I got light as a feather they got stiff as a board/ I can't feel any more, but I can fake it forever."
I could go through each of the songs on this album and make specific arguments about their virtues (even the Matrix songs), but the larger point I'm making is that in their rush to compare Liz to Avril, critics missed even the most basic levels of many of the songs, and some incredibly memorable metaphors in particular. Before leaving this point, I want to address one of the Matrix songs: "Favorite," on which Allmusic claims "she can't manage to write either a funny or sexy ode to her underwear."
The song, however, is not at all an ode to her underwear, as even a cursory read of the lyrics will show: it is an extended metaphor, comparing her favorite underwear to her relationship. And it is a very tricky metaphor at that--the metaphor undergoes subtle shifts as its referent (the love relationship) fits less and less with the symbol (the underwear). Straightforward connections like "Don't look sexy but it just feels right" bleed into less obvious but still plausible ones like "Not too dirty and it's not too tight" which bleed into patently ridiculous connections like "Keep it in the drawer beside my bed." This shifting of the metaphor's focus recalls Magnetic Fields songs like "Love Is Like a Bottle of Gin", in which the metaphor eventually falls apart completely.
What does this all mean? It means that the shiny production of The Matrix apparently turned off the ears of every critic who listened to Liz Phair. The album is actually full of complicated lyrics that repay repeated listens, and the tunes (especially the four mentioned above) are much more subtle than the album was credited with. Yes, it's true that Phair was making a mainstream move with this album. But the question is why this so threatened critics and fans. Surely they do not only listen to indie-rock in the style of Exile in Guyville. If we can divorce Liz Phair from the imagine of a ten-year younger Liz Phair, we find instead a pop-rock album that is funnier, hookier, and more lyrically complex than practically anything in the same class.
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