Recap Liz Phair at the Fine Line

The Liz Phair whose recent albums have polarized critics and fans did not show up at the Fine Line last night. Maybe some in the primarily middle-aged crowd still nursed a flicker of residual outrage over their indie-crush’s 2003 work with teenpop superproducers The Matrix, or her 2010 novelty-ish music biz satire “Bollywood.” But no one listening to Phair lead a capable three-piece band through her back catalog would be surprised that the same woman who wrote “Fuck And Run” and “Polyester Bride” also wrote “Extraordinary” (from the brilliant, yet critically lambasted “sell-out” Liz Phair) or “Oh, Bangladesh” (from last year’s slight-but-worthwhile album, Funstyle).

The Liz Phair whose stage fright notoriously torpedoed her first national tour in the ’90s is also long gone. Dressed in a short, spangly dress, mesh stockings, and heels, Phair was obviously comfortable with drawing leers from dorky male creeps. And whether sharing anecdotes about playing a benefit with Puddle Of Mudd or anticipating the Bears-Packers game, her conversational stage presence suited the intimacy of the club.

Phair understandably performed very little from Funstyle—most of its weird studio goofs weren’t meant to be recreated live—and even apologized for her inability to pull off “Bollywood” (while sharing an off-the-cuff rendition of its opening lines). She also avoided her biggest hit, “Why Can’t I?”—maybe she figured we’d heard it often enough in mid-’00s film trailers. And since Phair’s debut, Exile In Guyville, remains the centerpiece of her appeal, she offered up a healthy chunk of its songs last night, wrapping up by inviting a woman from the audience to sing backup on “Flower” (the bit about “get[ting] all wet between my legs”).

Eighteen years after Exile, those songs still stand out—musically, as evidence of a self-taught guitarist developing an idiosyncratic songwriting style, and lyrically, as field notes from a young woman evaluating the role of her sex appeal in a rock world where she wants dudes to take her seriously. Rock nostalgia shows typically offer their aging crowd members a chance to relive the careless energy and confidence of their youth. Phair’s Exile songs instead allowed us to remember the insecurity and uncertainty of what it was like to become an adult. And 1993 seemed like a long time ago.