The Phair Sex Guide

The perception of Liz Phair as the archetypal kooky collegiate rock chick may need some adjustment. Granted, the Illinois songstress still has a soapbox and knows how to use it, but in the five years between her last album, Whipsmart, and the current collection, the psychedelically-named Whitechocolatespaceegg, Phair has climbed the twin towers of marriage and motherhood.

Now 31, Phair is quite philosophical about the changes that have taken place in her life since she spurted to cult stardom in the early '90s with her landmark debut, Exile In Guyville—a record which Rolling Stone, aptly enough, voted one of the 200 Greatest Albums Of All Time.

"I had to become a little more mature, a little more responsible," muses Phair down a phoneline from her Chicago base. "A lot of people do that in their late twenties. If they're not mature when they leave school, then somewhere around those late twenties, everyone has to get their shit together. That's what I did. It just took a different form than most people."

Indeed, one of the most oft-repeated axioms of rock 'n' roll is that it allows its stars to exist in a state of suspended adolescence, if not actually become younger than yesterday. Did Phair ever feel like she could end up a refugee in pop's Tír na nÓg?

"I think that would have happened to me if I hadn't had my son. I think having my son was the catalyst that really helped me solidify my identity, which most people don't do—and sometimes to very fruitful ends in rock 'n' roll."

Thankfully, Phair resisted the temptation to make this record "The Baby Album", as so often happens when singers spawn sprogs. Whitechocolatespaceegg is still brimming with the playful impetuosity and occasional animosity of previous Phair fare. It's true there's a wider musical scope at work now and the sound is altogether brighter and more colourful, but the songs still revolve around Phair's idiosyncratic lyrics, with her trademark streams of consciousness and rambling conversational detours.

"Writing songs for me has been my way of tapping into all the dangerous or mischievous things that I'm interested in, but don't necessarily base my whole life around. That's what I use music for. It's a level above my real life."

One particular song, "Big Tall Man", is an impressionistic conundrum that leaves the mind a-boggle. Phair explains its genesis.

"When you're pregnant, you're not allowed to drink coffee or alcohol or anything. So you're forced into being totally sober. So I turned to reading books on getting to know your intuition; you know, psychic handbooks. One of the exercises was to channel someone. So I channelled my producer, Scott Litt. That song was verbatim what I wrote down. I turned it into a song."

What exactly does channelling someone mean?

"I dunno, I've never done it since," she laughs. "It's like a medium trying to speak to ghosts. It was all about trying to use an unused part of the brain. It was the only way I could try to keep the mystery alive when I was pregnant because you can't run off and eat mushrooms like you can when you're 20."

R.E.M. aficionados will recognise Scott Litt as the producer who oversaw the Athenians' passage from cult media darlings to mammoth mainstream rock monsters. Phair managed to coax Messrs. Berry, Buck and Mills (as well as R.E.M. session players Nathan December and Scott McCaughey) to play on one song, "Fantasize".

"That was a big thrill," enthuses Phair. "It was a big celebrity moment for me. They were all in the room and playing my song. It was a mind-boggle."

Was Phair a devout R.E.M. fan?

"I wasn't a fan in the sense that I would be waiting for their new album to come out, but I've always really loved their sound. And I always thought that Scott did something really special with them because they came from really chaotic beginnings. Their music was so emotional and not very rigid or organised. It had a painterly feel to it. Scott Litt had a way of keeping that alive yet still organising it, and bringing it into a pop form.

That's what I wanted done to my music because I'm very sloppy and very spontaneous in the way I write. I tried to come up with a new sound. Until now, I had only worked with Brad Wood. I wanted to grow a little bit."

The record company's press release for the new album holds Phair responsible for the existence of Alanis Morissette. Obviously, employers are wont to whip up the hype regarding their charges, but just how does Phair herself feel at the assertion that she is the godmother of 1990s confessional singer/songstresses?

"I think that's incredibly humiliating," she answers. "I would never have written that. In fact, in interviews I actively try and refute that, because I believe there's a lot of women who were making that kind of music. It's just that they didn't get the public forum that I got.

I hate when they try and infer that I'm responsible for Alanis Morissette. I've been out with her. I've seen her. She's way beyond me as a performer. I think what we all have in common is that we were all kind of spreading our wings. I was one of the first to get noticed in the early stages of this recent female rock movement. There's no one woman responsible for anyone else. It's just everybody picking up the ball and running with it."

Does Phair feel an affinity with her female songwriting peers or is it being disingenuous to lump them all in together and seek a common thread that doesn't exist?

"I come from a very political college background," she explains. "I believe that we do have a lot in common because of our experiences in the business. It's still a very male business. The women that I've encountered—the female performers at Lilith Fair last summer, or those I met at the Grammys—I think we all are reaching out to each other. Even if we get only, like, 25 minutes to bond, there's this intensity where we want to reach out and connect because we all know that we've been through so many similar things.

Maybe musically, you could make a case for some of us having an affinity, but as human beings, as women in this business, that's the strongest tie. We need to check in with each other and say, 'Yes, we have a peer group, and here we are'."

So it's important for Phair not to feel isolated from her sister acts?

"I heard Sarah McLachlan talk about isolation incessantly at the daily press conferences during the Lilith Fair tour because, generally, we are all so isolated from each other. It's an isolating business for an artist. Beyond that, to be female, to retain some female hierarchy within this male-created system, is really, really hard."

Phair joined the travelling players for 20 dates of the tour, in keeping with Lilith Fair's ever-revolving line-up. Does she believe this strictly women-only event to be a watershed for female artists?

"When I look on what I consider my glory days, it's not the Exile period at all," she says. "I was very confused and lonely then. I was almost fighting that whole phenomenon when it happened to me. I know I'm going to remember this last summer on the Lilith Fair tour as being my glory day. Because it was the victory of the underdog. No-one thought that they could do it and there we all were making history. I was so proud to be part of it. It was our own kind of Woodstock."

Lilith Fair introduced Phair to many different singers she might never have met otherwise (everyone from Emmylou Harris and Victoria Williams to Natalie Merchant and N'Dea Davenport were involved).

"Yeah. Now I would feel comfortable calling whoever it was and asking them to do something on the new record if that were appropriate. It was fun to have done a bunch of shows and observe the people who were just arriving and doing their first dates and seeing how excited they all were. They couldn't believe the environment. They were like, 'Wow, you're all nice and we're all talking and hanging out!'. It was so, so positive."

Will the Lilith Fair change the lot of women in the industry now?

"You know what, to tell you the truth, I think it's already changed things," she avers. "When you look at the proliferation of all these female acts, they're getting signed left and right. But I really believe that the only action you're gonna see beyond that is if we all get together and do it again. Women are gonna have to do it for themselves. I still hear men in the industry say, 'Women just can't pull in as big a crowd as men'. Maybe we're going to have to just keep on throwing these damn parties till we have our own history."

Sexual politics is also, of course, one of the recurring preoccupations of Phair's songs and the new album is no different: the emotional wear and tear of relationships as well as the politics of sex itself spring up frequently. One could almost subtitle a Liz Phair record "Sex And The Settee". Appropriately, the discussion turns to the ground-breaking TV series, Sex And The City, and its portrayal of New York women as indomitable sexual predators, chasing frustratingly ineffectual men.

"I definitely think that men have overrated the idea that women just want a cuddle and sensitivity," suggests Phair. "There was a time when women reined them in, saying 'You've got to listen to me when I talk and you have to remember that I have a life too'. And so men think, 'Ah, you want just sensitivity'. But most women I know have a very healthy sex drive and are concerned with it, in the same way men are.

Also, I think when men are young—18 or 19—they're really driven to have sex. They make the big display earlier on. It seems like they're just obsessed with it and women aren't. But then in their middle twenties, women start to get obsessed with it and men have calmed down a bit. But then men say, 'Well, they're desperate to have children'. You know what I mean?!"

Is it all down to the different biological cycles or sexual peaks of men and women?

"It could be that, but it could also be the fact that women are taught to be afraid of sex: 'You could get AIDS, you could get pregnant?' . . . Little girls are not really taught about sex. They're not taught to enjoy it or think of it as their right. It's like, 'Don't do it till you're married', 'Don't let them take advantage of you', 'If you don't bring my daughter home by 10 pm, I'll beat you up'. What is that saying to a girl? She's thinking, 'What is this guy going to try and do to me?' There's a sense of fear built around sex in our culture."

It's only when they get older that they get to grips with it?

"Yeah, they learn what it's all about and that they can control aspects of it."

Interestingly, Sex And The City is written by two men, yet it purports to offer a woman's perspective on sex and relationships.

"That's an old story. That's been around forever. Half the time with women singers, they're created by men and they sing the songs the men tell them to—with the exception of the Lilith Fair singers. But Sex And The City freaks me out a little bit because the women seem just a little bit desperate, ya know what I mean? They're always trying to be so happening but they're kind of old to be like that. They don't seem that obsessed with their work. There are a lot of women in New York City who work really hard and although I'm sure that when they go out they go really wild, I don't think they go out that much."

Where would you like to live?

"It depends on my husband too—where he can work and where he wants to work. I would like to go to California and I would love to live in New York, but it's really expensive. I wouldn't mind going to Europe and getting the hell out of America for a while. I feel wildly adventurous right now."

What are your feelings about America?

"I love America. I really do. But you can have too much baggage. Sometimes I just wish I knew the world a little better. It's so self-centred here. That's the great luxury of the place and I love to come back here and just wallow in it, but I don't want to die without having known what planet I was on."

Let's hope she finds out!

Whitechocolatespaceegg is out now on Matador/EMI.