QUICK SPINS: Liz Phair, Syd Barrett
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 27, 2010 4:20PM
In which we take a quick look at a few recent or upcoming musical releases.
Liz Phair's Funstyle may the weirdest album we've heard this year. Phair has gone from being the indie girl with the potty mouth (though she was always so much more than that despite the lens mostly male music critics forced her to be viewed through) to being a "diva" selling out for mainstream approval (even she would argue for this point) to her current incarnation as a MILF that doesn't give a fuck (through her own admission in a recent interview with Spin). Funstyle is a return to her lo-fi beginnings despite the presence of Dave Matthews (?!) and John Alagia, two men not known for muted recording styles, and while it's a complete and utter mess, it's a fascinating look into a woman fumbling to make sense of her place as an artist. She throws out poorly constructed jokes like "Bollywood" that are no better or worse than anything off Ween's earlier work, alongside screeds against an industry that has forsaken her now that she's no longer a valued or easily marketable commodity. Funstyle is the sound of Phair making music for no one other than herself and while that's admirable it's also the album's decent flaw, because Phair no longer seems so sure about what it is, exactly, she wants to be anymore. Fatal flaw or bold stance forward? You tell us.
Syd Barrett
An Introduction To Syd Barrett
It's safe to assume most fans of Pink Floyd, the folks who bought into the band post-Dark Side of the Moon, are either unfamiliar with Syd Barrett or know him as an odd lysergic footnote in the band's history. This compilation attempts to make the case for the man as a visionary ahead of his time. While we believe that premise wholly we're not so certain this collection successfully makes the case. It is the first time his work with Pink Floyd has been presented alongside his deeply troubled solo work, and with a slightly different song selection and better sequencing that tactic may just have worked. Instead the transition between Floyd output and the years of ex-bandmates and musical partners trying to wrangle coherent songs out of the solo artist is more jarring than it should be. If anything there's too much band work and too little of the laughing madcap tearing his way through uncomfortable songs structures in striking but clumsy attempts to wring pop out of a world vision so fractured that it resembles a mirror broken into a thousand pieces continually reflecting upon itself. That said if one takes this as a simple primer that then sends you into Barret's four (proper) album back catalog (two with Pink Floyd and two solo) then by all means, give this a spin and get hooked.