I was super-pumped when I found out that Liz Phair was set to play a show at Théâtre Corona, and why wouldn’t I be? I recently had the chance to dance in the nostalgia of an AQUA and Prozzäk rewind double-bill, and after having an excellent time at a victory lap for one pair of 90s voices-of-a-generation, I jumped at the opportunity to see another one on Tuesday night – especially a band with a little more bite. I would, in fact, be rocked – but I would also be reminded that more than one generation can lay claim to being “90s kids”.
Though I heard a few grey-haired folks ask “Speedy Ortiz? Who is that guy?” before the show started, these seasoned skeptics were surely put at ease by the time they heard the quartet, who immediately ripped into the cream of the crop from last spring’s excellent Twerp Verse. Playing through that record’s first three tracks in order, the Massachusetts crew gave newbies a quick crash course in what they’re all about: sharp-toothed wordplay, start-and-stop song structures, and Weezer-esque guitar/bass skronk.
“Raising the Skate” was the first sequence-break from the Twerp Verse listening party, opening the setlist up to more tracks from Foil Deer (“The Graduates”) and Major Arcana (“Plough”) before returning to heavier Twerp tunes like “Villain” and the sarcastic “I’m Blessed”.
Guitarist and vocalist Sadie Dupuis was characteristically friendly and talkative with the crowd, taking breaks to promote the band’s donation drive for the “Making Spaces Safer: A Pocket Guide” chapbook, to shout-out the wizened contingent in the front row who were well on their way to building a sizeable beer pyramid (beer-a-mid), and to thank Liz as the tour comes to an end (“You’re catching us in our feelings!”). The band wrapped up with a gnarly “Tiger Tank”, assuring any alternative aficionado that the kids are absolutely alright.
You can trace a strong lineage back from the sound of bands like Speedy Ortiz to the work of Liz Phair, who broke ground in the early 90s by plugging in, raising her voice, and taking aim at an alt-rock scene dominated by dudes. Since then, Phair’s charted her own path following her musical and literary instincts – but on Tuesday night, she triumphantly announced that “we’re here to rock… prepare yourselves”.
Phair and her band spent the summer celebrating the landmark 25th anniversary of the breakthrough Exile in Guyville and its origins in Phair’s original Girly-Sound home recordings. However, this fall’s “Amps on the Lawn” tour seeks to build a more casual, relaxed setting for intimate crowds, with Astroturf backdrops and a more freewheeling cross-catalogue setlist that started off with “Supernova” from 1994’s Whip-Smart.
Phair’s promise to rock was well-founded, with a heavy sound mix that nearly threatened to overwhelm her force-of-nature lyrics (“Your kisses are as wicked as an F-16 / And you fuck like a volcano, and you’re everything to me”). Things quickly worked themselves out during “Johnny Feelgood” and “Cinco De Mayo”, giving more fuel to audience members boogying in the crowd and to the Rolling Stones comparisons that have dogged Phair since early MTV interviews.
But even though Phair opened the set with a bang and kept going strong, I’m ashamed to admit that my attention started to wane back-and-forth from this point in the show, distracted by repeated visits from yellow-jacketed security to one of the older folks that had been contributing to the front-row beer monolith earlier in the evening. I couldn’t make out the full nature of the disturbance, but it does seem like Phair was distracted too, repeatedly looking over to that general direction and pausing during “Uncle Alvarez” to firmly-but-Phairly say “You gotta stop”.
The guy, evidently having way too much to drink and being obviously old enough to know better, was eventually escorted by security to watch the show from the sidelines (with Phair reassuring the audience “feel better, everybody!”). But even so, the man spent the rest of the set continuing to be a nuisance. Again and again, he escaped from adult daycare jail to shamble up to the front of the crowd… only to be repeatedly dragged back to the Phantom Zone by security – and all of this without ever being ejected from the venue. It’s an extreme shame that concerned audience members are forced to split their attention between the musicians on stage and increasingly worrisome crowd behaviour from a grown adult stuck in a Benny Hill routine. It’s even more ridiculous for this to happen in front of two bands that have fought tooth-and-nail to make safe spaces for all kinds of music lovers.
But, rant over: because while I myself was distracted, I don’t want to take any credit away from a show that continued to blow down doors. Even though they were written 25 years ago, songs like “6-Foot-One” and “Never Said” crackle with newfound maturity and triumph, standing up tall from here on the other side of growing up. Whip-Smart’s “Go West”, which originally appeared in demo form on the Girly-Sound bedroom tapes, was reinvented once again as a hushed trio song with acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass. Whitechocolatespaceegg and Phair’s 2004 self-titled record also had strong showings, including a set-closing and newly-rockified version of her swing at pop stardom, “Why Can’t I?”.
Phair’s titularly whip-smart sense of humour reaches beyond her lyrics, joking with the crowd about her dream to move to Montreal and to become an erotic writer, or improvising torch songs to Canada, “the sexy girl I had to leave behind”. Coming back to an encore and laughing that “you didn’t think we’d forget the two most important songs, did you?”, Phair prefaced “Fuck and Run” with a twist – congratulating audience member Kelly Bergeron on her run for Ontario municipal office with a new slogan: “just fuckin’ run”.
Whether they were old enough to have listened to Phair during the Guyville days or were just checking her out for the first time, the proportion of the crowd that wasn’t making asses of themselves were polite and bouncy, boppin’ to the sunny and worldly show-ending “Divorce Song”. But after spending a night wrapped in smart-aleck kick-ass guitar-rock both old and new, maybe everyone in the audience has the right to call themselves an honorary 90s kid in one way or another.
NOTE: For more information about making rock shows and other artistic/community spaces safer for the people that love them, please check out Making Spaces Safer from AK Press.
Review – Dan Corber
Share this :
