Liz Phair is a woman of many faces. Her varied identities run the gamut from well-bred rich girl to blow-job queen to, most recently, doting Mommy. But, last night, she hung them all up for just one persona.
In a floor-sweeping black skirt with slits up to her thighs and a fur-trimmed fitted red shirt, Phair teetered around on platforms in the role of chanteuse. Belting out her signature songs while playing up the sexiness of her svelte 5'2" frame through her dancing, it seemed that carpool, Tellytubbies and Phair's well-publicized stage fright were all worlds away.
Appeasing the die-hard Phair snobs, she began the set with back-to-back tracks from her debut album Exile in Guyville. She then addressed the full-capacity audience, which included the likes of close Phair friend Winona Ryder and Aussie wunderkind Ben Lee, with, "It's so good to be back in New York. It's one of my favorite cities and will be forever."
It wasn't until six songs into the set that Phair offered up a taste of her delectable whitechocolatespacegg, with a string of four new songs: "Johnny Feelgood," "Uncle Alvarez," "Big Tall Man" and the album's standout track, "Polyester Bride." Female Phair disciples emphatically sang along on lines like: "And I asked Henry, my bartending friend/If I should bother dating unfamous men."
After twirling around with her arms in a ballerina's standard fifth position, Phair introduced her band (who were all dressed like mobsters) and expressed her gratefulness. "They make it possible for me to stand up here without shaking so badly that I fall over," she explained.
While the acoustics at Roseland were a bit hollow and Phair's vocal amp was turned up to eleven, the petite pop princess could do no wrong. Aware that there is but one Liz Phair, who performs live about as often as she shies away from the topic of sex, the audience fixated on her, in a nearly stationary manner, for the duration of the set.
Before the last song of her encore, a peak-energy Phair, now sporting a short crushed velvet dress, asked the audience, "Okay, last chance, what do you want to hear?" She knowingly chuckled to herself when the same song request bounced back to her in thousands of wailing voices. Phair shook her head from side to side and rocked out on guitar, while delivering the Guyville classic "Fuck and Run," and then switched her identity back to parent and disappeared off in to Mommyland.
