The answer is not the one fans were hoping for. The disconnect between the tanned, smiling woman onstage at the Paradise and the wry, raw songs she was singing was massive, all the more because the songs have held up so well. Ingenious chord changes, clever lyrics, the sheer range of moods and textures - from the swaggering rock of "6'1" " and eerie meditations like "Shatter" to indie torch "Canary" and grungy "Strange Loop" - make "Guyville" a great listen 15 years after its installation as a cultural/feminist touchstone.
Phair served it up like a good hostess. She was gracious to a fault, cheerful and attentive, accompanied by a lean, crisp three-piece that played hi-fi approximations of the album's scrappy riffs. Nobody expected Phair to re-create the work in its original coarse glory. For starters, she knows how to sing in tune now. And her aesthetics have shifted dramatically, from crude and contrary to glossy and accessible. The show - the first of two sold-out dates at the club - wasn't a séance to bring back the former Liz Phair.
But Phair denied her followers (and herself?) the pleasures and the insights that can come when a mature musician revisits an early, defining work. She chattered on, but had little to say between songs, and none of it reflected on the music or its resonance unless you count her straw poll to figure out how many people have had sex to "Exile in Guyville."
Phair was dressed provocatively, in skimpy shorts and tall boots. She looked hot, but she felt cold, and in a way that's a fair tribute to the messed-up sexuality Phair chronicles on "Guyville." Yet the commanding emotional subtext was all but missing. There were only a handful of gripping moments during the 75-minute set.
During "Dance of the Seven Veils," a cutting duet for electric guitars, Phair stopped grinning at the audience and turned inward. Her playing grew languid and distorted, and the tone of her voice changed, subtly but powerfully, from low and flat to chillingly numb. Folksy "Explain It to Me" was re-imagined as a rough, fluid wash of sound, and Phair let the musical tides move her.
Maybe a few more fresh arrangements would have provided the inspiration that simple resurrection did not. Phair was much more involved in the one new song she performed - alongside "May Queen," "Chopsticks," and "Polyester Bride" - during the encore. Sadly, the tune is a clunker, a rootsy rock tune with CCR vibe and a refrain that goes "Ding dong the witch is dead." Phair's new album is due out on ATO, Dave Matthews's label, later this year. It's hard to imagine anyone is waiting with bated breath.
