Liz’s “Phair” Due in June
Liz Phair’s first album in almost five years has been pushed back to a June 24th release, and undergone a title transformation — from “Happy Tragic Thing” to Liz Phair. The album is the follow-up to Phair’s less-efficiently titled 1998 release Whitechocolatespaceegg.
The fourteen-track record features Phair in a variety of settings with different collaborators. Singer-songwriter Michael Penn produced five of the songs, while four tracks enjoy the Midas touch of pop production hit machine the Matrix (Avril Lavigne). R. Walt Vincent (Pete Yorn) worked on the album’s other five cuts. According to Phair, who pulled the album from a pool of more than thirty songs, those that made the cut were the louder songs. “The songs that made it onto the album are the ones that rock,” she said. “I wanna sell some records, goddammit.”
Phair, who prior to 2003 hadn’t performed in nearly three years, showcased some of the new material during a nine-song-set at the Sundance Film Festival.
Phair also said that the album finds her more comfortable in front of the microphone than on previous efforts. “My voice is so much better because I’m not as self-conscious as I used to be,” she told Rolling Stone. “Somewhere along the way I got rid of a lot of my fear about singing, and I’ve really been working hard on developing my voice.”
The first single, “Why Can’t I,” is due in late-April.
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