Review: Liz Phair’s Soberish Too Often Falls Back on Tired Pop Trends

The singer still has a knack for sharp melodies and lyrical gems, but the album’s sonic presentation falls flat.

Liz Phair, Soberish
Photo: Eszter+David

“There are so many ways to fuck up a life/I tried to be original,” Liz Phair sings on “Good Side,” the lead single from Soberish, her first album in nearly 11 years. In the past, critics and indie purists have bristled at some of the alt-rock legend’s musical choices. On her 2003 self-titled effort, she hooked up with hitmaking team the Matrix and penned guitar-pop anthems that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Avril Lavigne album. Later, she composed the musical score for the CBS drama Swingtown, a decision she mocked by rapping about it over a Bollywood beat on the self-released Funstyle in 2010.

Soberish continues in this more commercial vein — though, thankfully, there’s nothing quite as blatant in its bid for radio airplay as anything on Liz Phair, nor anything as head-scratching as “Bollywood.” It’s not that Phair can’t or shouldn’t do pop. There was always something of that sensibility lurking behind even the starkest of lo-fi confessionals on Exile in Guyville, her intimate and revelatory 1993 debut that brought her instant acclaim. On 1994’s Whip-Smart and especially 1998’s whitechocolatespaceegg,  which boasted bigger, more conventional arrangements and production,  the pop stylings were more pronounced but without sacrificing Phair’s authentic sensibility or edgy neo-feminist perspective.

Musically and thematically, Soberish is not dissimilar to those albums, but it more readily recalls 2007’s generic though still enjoyable Somebody’s Miracle. This is Phair in repose, self-reflecting and settling comfortably into middle age—though on the aptly titled “Bad Kitty,” she returns to familiar themes of sexual frankness and boundary-pushing innuendo.

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The problem, however, lies in the album’s flat sonic presentation. Producer Brad Wood, who also manned the boards on Phair’s first three efforts, jettisons nearly all of the originality and personality of those albums and simply falls back on current fads. It’s become commonplace for contemporary artists to beef up their sound with canned beats and electronic flourishes, but in this case the studio gloss threatens to smother the life out of most of the songs. It’s rare that Wood allows a single organic moment—the strum of an acoustic guitar, the lilt of a violin, an unadorned vocal—the space to breathe on its own before unleashing a digital flood.

For her part, Phair still has a knack for sharp melodies and bite-sized lyrical gems (“I tried to stay sober, but the bar is so inviting,” she quips on the album’s title track), and the technical simplicity of her voice is often its best feature. “The ghost I see in the mirror doesn’t smile anymore,” she sings in “Spanish Doors”, and the beauty in that statement is heartbreaking, but the sympathy is undercut by heavily processed backing vocals intoning “Don’t wanna think about it/Don’t wanna talk about it/Don’t wanna know.”

At her best, Phair can still make an impression, and the best tracks on Soberish, like “Dosage” and “The Game,” boast a buoyant energy and infectious refrains that are strong enough to overcome the album’s stock production. These songs will likely sound great when Phair hits the road this summer with fellow ’90s mainstays Alanis Morissette and Garbage, further cementing her decision to cater to the ’90s mallternative set.

Score: 
 Label: Chrysalis  Release Date: June 4, 2021  Buy: Amazon

Brian Theobald

Brian Theobald's writing has appeared in EDGE Publications, Film Comment, and Times Beacon-Record Newspapers, among others. He also writes essays and short fiction, mainly on the subject of autism.

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