A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

AH, LIZ PHAIR (IN LOVE AND WAR): Yeah, it's also possible to write balanced pieces about Liz Phair's new album, to treat her new album not as career suicide but as a legitimate effort by an established audience to broaden her appeal.

See the Boston Globe's Joan Anderman and Evelyn McDonell in the Miami Herald, both of whom have balanced-to-positive takes. For instance, Anderman quotes Phair defending the venture: ''It's pretty simple. I'm not 25 and getting high all the time. I'm happy I did 'Guyville' and that people felt that way about it. Honestly, I look back and think, 'How did I do that?' I can't write like that anymore, so I'm just gonna keep going. This album is a true representation of what I like and who I am. I know what makes me happy, and I'm unafraid to pursue it.''

Still, for every article like that, there's still writers like long-time Throwing Things favorite Jim DeRogatis, who tackles the new album in a lengthy Sun-Times piece:

Now, with the self-titled "Liz Phair" (Capitol), the singer-songwriter is devoting herself to scoring the mainstream hit that has so far eluded her. She yearns for a feel-good ditty as ubiquitous and innocuous as "Soak Up the Sun" by her friend Sheryl Crow, which found Phair adding backing vocals, and she proves that she's willing to pander to sexism (she appears naked on the cover but for a guitar) and the demands of the pop mainstream (parts of the disc were produced by The Matrix, the platinum-selling production team behind Avril Lavigne's "Let Go") in order to get it.

Phair is no Crow (she lacks the sophistication) and she's certainly no Lavigne (she's never been that naive, energetic or blissfully bubblegum). The result is one of the most tragically compromised records that a once-uncompromising artist has ever made.

DeRogatis recently described Exile in Guyville about as accurately as you can in two sentences: "[T]he album is a statement about what it's like to be a sharp, talented young woman who simultaneously loves and hates the men in her life. She can't live with them, and she can't live without them, but she'll be damned if she stops trying to find her ideal soul mate--or to concede that the problem may be partly her own."

Whatever this album ends up becoming, they can't take away my Guyville.