Liz Phair
Somebody's Miracle (Capitol)
By Charlotte Robinson
Published: October 5th, 2005 | 3:24pm
I've been trying to make myself listen to Somebody's Miracle a few more times in order to get into the spirit of the thing and give it a fair and descriptive review. To hell with that. When a music lover with a pretty broad range of taste can barely make it through an album, there's a reason.
Former indie-rock queen Liz Phair has described her new album as being more band-oriented than her eponymous 2003 effort, which was roundly panned for its overproduction. While it's not a return to form, Somebody's Miracle is nowhere near as obnoxious as its predecessor, and even offers a few good hooks on songs like "Stars and Planets" and "Got My Own Thing." But mostly, the album’s just bland.
Phair has made it clear she wants to escape the indie ghetto and bring her music to a larger audience. That's fine, and plenty of artists have managed to balance commercial success with a strong artistic vision, but now that Phair is no longer the angst-ridden 26-year-old who created Exile in Guyville, she seems to have run out of things to say. Take this lame lyric from "Count on My Love," where Phair sounds more like a teenager doodling in a journal than the songwriter who gave us "Divorce Song" or "Polyester Bride": "Blue eyes, bluer than the blue sky / Smiling down like sunshine, everywhere you are." Another clue that Phair's artistic well has run dry is the inclusion of a toned-down version of "Can't Get Out of What I'm Into" from her Girlysound demos of roughly 15 years ago.
Phair proved with 1998's whitechocolatespaceegg that she could bring her humor and insight to more mature material, embellish it with better production, and still turn out an emotionally powerful album. Unfortunately, her subsequent releases haven't lived up to that benchmark.
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