Liz Phair

It’s been nearly two decades since Liz Phair gave us Exile in Guyville. What’s more remarkable than the time-lapse is that she’s been able to sustain a career in the years since, coasting on the fumes of her sexually-charged debut. A 2008 reissue of that still-revered album and an accompanying tour found the New Trier High School grad revisiting the songs she’s best (and most fondly) remembered for. She teased that having to relearn all those tunes might jump-start her creatively. Maybe her next record wouldn’t suck.

Oh, how it does. Phair’s stylistically omnivorous new album, Funstyle, sent her management and label running—a fact that she admirably acknowledges on a few cringe-inducing tunes. Never one to throw herself a pity party, Phair awkwardly raps about her industry woes over a bhangra backbeat without an ounce of shame. But what might be most surprising about her sixth album is that inserted in this train wreck meta-commentary are a couple of gems. No one would confuse “You Should Know Me” for an Exile track, but it’s honest, relatively bare-bones folk-pop—one of her best songs in years. That Dave Matthews produced it is just another head-scratcher for someone who’s eked a career out of a series of creative stumbles.

The self-described “Pop Star Super MILF,” 43, must get a kick out of wind-milling through high-water marks like “Fuck and Run” and “Stratford-On-Guy.” If her set at Matador’s recent birthday bash was any indication, that resparked ’90s nostalgia is still enough to put her over once more at the Metro.

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