Liz Phair, Liz Phair

We were relieved to discover that the atrocious buzz about Liz Phair’s attempt at pop starletry was too harsh. Only some of the new record is cringingly awful. A self-imposed exile from Exile in Guyville, her celebrated debut three albums ago, and a move toward slick pop is not necessarily wrongheaded—why should the field be ceded to Britney and the other vapid airheads? But her new perky odes to breathless first love sound clumsy and pandering, and often just downright appalling—like her bubbly tribute to bodily fluids, “H.W.C.,” which we will refrain from spelling out. But there is material on Liz Phair that works; “Bionic Eyes” genuinely rocks, and Phair hasn’t turned her back on the disarmingly honest lyric, as on “Little Digger,” a knowingly sad number about her son’s emotional turmoil over mom’s new boyfriends. We just can’t help being worried about another lyric that sounds all too honest, given the artistic bankruptcy apparent elsewhere on the disc: “I can’t feel any more, but I can fake it forever.”