No Rock And Roll Fun

PHAIR ENOUGH?: We've been keeping an eye on the Liz Phair goes Avril saga - obviously, you know, it's her choice, yada yada. Now the album - co-created with the likes of the Matrix - is out, and the critical reaction is rather like what happens when British actors go to Hollywood - you know they're going to get a chilly reception, but the level of critfrost always comes as a surprise.

Liz says she wants to keep her indieness, do highbrow and lowbrow, but that seems kind of naive and over-hopeful, what with The Rules of Indie being what they are. She could have come from the Top 40 world and been given a special pass to credibility - taking a Kylie Minogue route, who spent a couple of years hanging around with the likes of the Primals and managed to keep hold of her indie-darling status when she decided she'd rather actually sell records again, thank you very much. Depeche Mode also managed to turn their Woolworths-favourites status inside out. But going in the opposite direction - to be a 'proper' indie artist, to make a Big Glossy Record - and try to keep your indie position is far, far trickier to pull off. We'd imagine that she finds that ridiculous, and so do we, to be honest, but, hey, we don't make the rules. And if her gamble pays off, and she does sell bucketloads of 'Liz Phair', we'd imagine that not being held in the same high esteem by the people who think "MTV2? too mainstream" won't cause her many sleepless nights. (If the gamble fails, mind you...)

It's also worth noting the eponymous title for the album - the standard self-titled release is the first, where the album's name serves as a calling card as well. It's almost like she's restarting from scratch.