Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple take note: five years after blazing a trail by which female songwriters could inject their sexuality into their art without shrouding it in veils of coyness, Liz Phair is moving on.

One of the brightest among the wave of strong-willed female songwriters who burst onto the scene in the early '90s, Phair figured prominently in creating an environment in which brazen upstarts like Morissette could flourish. Along with Polly Jean Harvey, Courtney Love, and (to a lesser extent) Tori Amos, Phair combined intelligence with raw sexuality to subvert the eye-batting coyness that had characterized most girl groups in the '80s. Adding to Phair's appeal was her way of couching explicitness not in punk ferocity, as one might expect, but rather in the sort of pop melodies that could often pass for children's songs, albeit ones with a bit of an edge. All things considered, it's difficult to imagine that such grand-scale, female-oriented productions as the Lilith Fair tours could have occurred were it not for the trail-blazing ways of Phair and her like-minded peers.

Born on April 17, 1967, Elizabeth Clark Phair was adopted and raised by a physician father (he leads the Infectious Disease department at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago) and a culturally minded mother who works as an art historian. Growing up in the affluent Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Phair was nurtured by loving parents who encouraged her creative proclivities. Although she was especially drawn to visual arts in her adolescence (indeed, she eventually graduated from college with an Art History degree), she began writing songs on piano as a grade-schooler, and by the time she reached junior-high she was taking lessons on guitar. At age 13, she also struck up an acquaintance with future actress Julia Roberts (the two met at summer camp), but according to Phair, the girls' burgeoning friendship was scuttled by a clash of egos.

While attending Oberlin College in Ohio, Phair hooked into a thriving local band scene and continued her tentative efforts to compose songs. Upon graduating, she moved to San Francisco, where she intended to pursue a career in art. Instead, she spent most of her time jamming in her living room with Chris Brokaw (future guitarist for the Boston-based band, Come), who was instantly smitten with Phair's songwriting. Drifting back to Chicago, Phair divided her time between creating charcoal sketches and recording songs in her bedroom on a cheap four-track recorder. Eventually, she compiled her work on two cassettes, which she titled Girly Sound, and sent copies to Brokaw and one other friend. Dubs of the tapes quickly began circulating throughout the East Coast indie scene, and by 1992 samples of Phair's work had fallen into the hands of executives at Matador Records.

Duly impressed, Matador co-owner Gerard Cosloy gave Phair a $3,000 advance to work on a single. Soon, however, the scope of the project escalated, and with help from producer-drummer Brad Wood, Phair began developing a song cycle structured loosely as a response to the Rolling Stones' 1972 classic, Exile On Main Street. Though the connection seems tenuous on the surface, Phair took the concept seriously, as she explained to Request magazine in 1993.

"The more I listened to [Exile On Main Street], the more it was perfectly appropriate. I began to organize my songs into a correspondence with themes I'd seen in Exile. I made lists and lists of what Exile's songs were -- three words or less, what kind of song is this? -- and made tons of sequence lists, different orders of the songs I wanted to do. It was like writing a thesis, talking a song of mine and somehow putting it in a dialogue with a song on Exile, both sonically and lyrically.

Released in mid-1993, Phair's own Exile In Guyville (the term "Guyville" was a mild slap at Chicago's near-exclusively male indie music scene) generated a murmur among the rock press that became a deafening roar by year's end. Spiked with lyrical explicitness heretofore unthinkable for a pop-oriented female singer, Guyville triggered a wave of accolades that focused on Phair's melodic inventiveness as well as her sexual candor. Rewarded with "Album of the Year" honors by both Spin and the Village Voice (Rolling Stone merely ran a cover photo of Phair proclaiming, "A Rock & Roll Star Is Born"), Phair embarked on her first tour in early 1994, despite suffering from serious stage fright. By the spring of that year, she had appeared on the covers of both Elle and Vogue, and even the powers-that-be at Playboy solicted her for a pictoral (she turned them down).

In the wake of Guyville's success, Phair renegotiated a six-figure contract with Matador, which had recently entered a partnership arrangement with major-label Atlantic Records. The deal called for five albums over the next several years, and Phair immediately set out to create a follow-up to Guyville. Titled Whip-Smart, the 1994 release struggled to meet the high expectations generated by its predecessor. Contributing to Whip-Smart's disappointing sales was Phair's refusal to provide tour support, a decision which drew the ire of Matador president Chris Lombardi. Little did he know that four years would pass before Phair would release another full-length album of new material.

As it turned out, Phair's reasons for ducking out of the limelight were both honorable and valid. In late 1995, she and her live-in boyfriend, film editor Jim Staskauskas, were married, and despite a considerable amount of session work with producer Scott Litt in 1996, Phair's newfound marital contentment seemed to overshadow her interest in making an album. The sessions with Litt were eventually tabled, and Phair retreated even more deeply into domestic life. On December 21, 1996, she gave birth to a son, which extended her leave of absence from the music business for another year.

Rumblings of Phair's re-emergence began in the spring of 1998, when it was announced that she would join Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair tour for a series of shows. Several weeks later, a date was firmed up for the release of her long-awaited third album, and on August 10 the unwieldly-titled whitechocolatespaceegg hit record stores. Unlike her previous work, the new album devotes most of its 16 songs to exploring the dynamics of domesticity. In "Love Is Nothing", for instance, Phair celebrates the predictablilty inherent in permanent relationships, while "Go On Ahead" addresses the inevitable bumps-in-the-road in any marriage with tenderness and perspective. Throughout, whitechocolatespaceegg is buoyed with glorious melodies and just enough stylistic diversity to keep things interesting. Though Phair's musical sensibilty remains decidedly pop-oriented, lending variety are occasional dashes of acoustic folk ("Perfect World"), herky-jerky Bo Diddley-like rhythms ("Baby Got Going"), and even one synth-driven song reminiscent of Gary Numan's "Cars" ("Headache").

During a two-week respite sandwiched between several Lilith Fair dates and an upcoming solo tour, Phair spoke with Performing Songwriter about her much-anticipated return to rock and roll. Fittingly, her comments were often accompanied by the sound of a baby cooing in the background. Punctuating her comments with lots of laughter and the occasional, "Do you know I mean?," she seemed unguarded and forthcoming, and her demeanor was marked by an easy confidence.

When you began recording whitechocolatespaceegg, you first decided to work with Scott Litt as producer. How did he come to be your first choice?
I had always loved R.E.M.'s albums, in particular the way they sound. And I liked [Litt's] way of capturing a pop sensibility without being unoriginal. The things he does sound great. He makes vocals sound fantastic.

After recording for months with him, you decided to go back to working with Brad Wood, who had produced Exile In Guyville and Whip-Smart. What prompted that decision?
Scott and I did really well in the studio when we were sort of creating stuff ourselves, when we were being experimental without utilizing a bunch of extra musicians. But when we tried to record the bigger rock-song sounding stuff, it really didn't work that well. We both got very frustrated, and we didn't know what to do. We kind of stopped and started, and stopped and started. Finally it was suggested that I work on my own for a little bit, to kind of flesh out the songs arrangement-wise. So I did that, and then when it came to recording again, everyone wanted me to try to work with Brad. It so happened I had reacquainted myself with my earlier work, and had re-appreciated all that [Wood] had done. I saw its merit, and what his genius is.

Which is what?
Which is to take small songs that I create, and help realize them, or give them a lot of instrumentation without losing that core "Liz Phair" sound. As it turns out, that's much harder to do than I had originally thought.

You continued to write during the time you were pregnant. How did that affect you?
It kind of made them a little "trippier". Sometimes when I write songs, I'm really conscious of it, and I focus hard on certain things and really try to work at it. But when I was pregnant, I really wasn't paying that much attention to writing songs. I just did it in relation to my emotional ups and downs. My favorite way to write songs is when they kind of come out of you from some subconscious place, kind of like a dream does -- where they have that powerful, already-written quality. And a lot of that happened while I was pregnant. There was a lot of stuff, emotionally, that I hadn't thought about that suddenly appeared.

Did that continue to happen after the baby was born?
For a while, for about eight months or so. Then it all kind of synthesized. The thing about this album that really strikes me is that it combines the person I am now with the person I was throughout my whole life, rather than just being indicative of a two-year or a three-year period. It really felt the way Exile did, in that it encompassed my whole lifetime. It's similar to Exile in a lot of ways, in terms of how I recorded it, and in the way I drew from my past and my present.

Four years passed between your last album and whitechocolatespaceegg, and even after you began recording there were a lot of delays. Did your record company put much pressure on you to come up with something during those years?
They were pretty cool. They were all waiting to see if I would resurface at all. No one really knew what to expect, after I had the baby, but I'm thirlled to say that they were very supportive. I felt like it wasn't until the end [of recording], when they could tell I had a substantial body of work, that people started to get frantic. Then it was like, "Try this," or "Do this," or "We need more of that." It got exciting for them. At the time I was really kind of frustrated, because I kept trying to convey things to them and they would be like, "I don't see it, I don't get it." And I'd go back to the drawing board and record more stuff. In retrospect, I realize they were doing that because they were getting excited, because now they had something they could work with.

You say that at some point while you were working on this album, you went back and listened to your previous work. Did you feel any urge to revise your old material?
(Laughs) I sometimes have the urge to go back and revise statements I've made in the press. But no, I didn't have that kind of urge at all, really. I don't look back very often, and that's a fault, because it would behoove me to re-examine my previous work more often. What it did was really shock me, because I realized just how much that was special about it was owed to Brad. I had always assumed I had all these great ideas -- and I did -- but a lot of it was him, in terms of how things sounded, and the way he miked the instruments, or the way he mixed it. And I was just flabbergasted at how much of his talent had maybe been taken for granted. As I listened, I just sat there and thought, "Oh my God, pleeease will you work with me again?" He has a way of taking my personal slant, and allowing that to live and breathe all the way to the finished product. As it turns out, that's something that isn't very common with a producer and a songwriter. I had to go and explore and work with other people in order to learn that.

Did you and Brad do any more work on the songs you had recorded with Scott Litt?
No. I'm a pain-in-the-ass when it comes to that sort of thing. I don't like to turn around and look behind me. When I got to work with Brad, I was like, "Let's do all new stuff," and that's how I feel all the time. It's like, if it isn't working, I'd rather go and do all new material. That tends to be my way of doing things in gerneral,. Which worked out fine, because with Scott we had gone over and over the same songs -- recording them a million times, it seemed -- and it never got better. I'm talking now about the big, "rock-oriented" stuff. With those, I just kind of put it all behind me. What I did with Brad was demo a whole bunch of new songs on tape -- like, twelve new songs. He and I kind of tentatively agreed on what was good, and we went from there.

Despite being recorded with two producers -- or rather three, including yourself -- the album coheres really well. To what do you attribute that?
A lot of that has to do with Tom Lord-Alge, who mixed the whole thing. I mean, you could say a lot of that has to do with my feisty ways, too, since I picked the songs where I really felt myself to be present, personality-wise. But I think a lot of the credit goes to the way Tom Lord-Alge mixed it. He has a very personal sound. What he did with some of the songs we had already finished was one of the most educational parts of making this album -- watching him work, and watching songs that I thought I knew upside-down and inside-out being turned into something new and really cool. He would give songs like "Big Tall Man", for instance, an entirely different flavor. I was so impressed.
I got to work with great people on this album, people who I really admire and respect. And I learned a lot. This four years [between albums] wasn't just about, "Oh, can we squeeze something else out of Liz Phair while she's busy having a baby." It was about me wanting to grow, and wanting to get a sense of what other bands get at the beginning [of their careers], just by virtue of having already worked at it for so long.
I became famous much sooner than I should have, from an experience standpoint. I was totally inexperienced, I didn't know anything about the business, and everything happened just like that. So this time -- between Whip-Smart and whitechocolatespaceegg -- was my time to actually learn what it's like to do all these different things, to try different things and to appreciate what all you have to do.

In the past, much has been made of your problems with stage fright. Are you comfortable playing live now?
I'm getting there. I have to say I like it a lot. I look forward to it now. It feels more like an opportunity, rather than feet-to-the-fire time. I still get nervous, but it's getting a lot better.

A lot of songwriters say that performing live has a strong impact on their writing, that they learn a great deal from performing. That seems not to be true, in your case. You don't seem to need the feedback that some songwriters need to tell them when they're onto something good.
I guess I don't. But if I were someone who performed frequently, I might not say the same thing. That's just how I came up. I'm more of the method that says: write a lot of songs, and then go back later and see if they work. If you wait a couple of months then you can really tell. Some songs are resonant, and other songs are more fleeting and temporal, or feel more decorative than substantial. The good ones have everything going for them. They have important lyrical content, they have craftsmanship, in terms of structure, and they have hooks and melodies.

What was the general atmosphere on the Lilith Fair dates? The reason I ask is, Sarah McLachlan commented last year that there was some tension and competition among the performers until the Indigo Girls came on board. After that, everyone seemed to loosen up.
That's interesting, because my dates were baptized by the Indigo Girls as well, with their coming in for their part of the tour. They really did kind of rough your hair a bit, and say, "Hey, get on out there!" They played a great leadership role on the tour, and were, I would say, the glue for new people who didn't really know what was going on. Although from the moment I got there, Sarah reached out to me and was friendly and supportive, and very much like an equal. It wasn't like, "Hello, I'm the queen. Thank you for joining us."
I think this year things were maybe easier, because people knew what to expect. There was a platform to stand on and work from, an alredy known quantity. But I think it was definitely quite a feat to pull off all those egos in one summer, with all those different bills. To have everyone feel like they belonged, and that they were welcome to contribute to other people's sets, was really cool. The finale was cool. There was a whole vibe that came with Lilith Fair, and I know I was very clear to fit in and support it in any way I could. I think everybody else felt the same way.

Do you tend to write songs from start to finish, or do you sort of collect pieces fit them together over time?
A lot of them I write from start to finish, and those tend to be my favorites. It's so cool to have something come out of me fully formed. It's like Zeus bringing Athena from his head, like "Whoa! How did I do that?" It doesn't even feel like I did it. But then with other songs, I might write three-fourths of it, and then the next summer re-write it. I cannibalize a lot. I'll re-write my songs ad infinitum, or on and on ad nauseam.

Which come easier for you, ballads or rockers?
They're pretty much equal. A lot of it has to do with the environment that I'm in. I'm pretty reactionary, so if I'm sitting around being pregnant, or, after the baby's been born, if he's sleeping, I'll find myself writing quiet songs, or kind of wistful songs. And if I get a couple of days to myself -- where everybody's out of town, and I can turn the volume up on my amplifier and mess around with the knobs and dials -- suddenly all I want to write are punk songs. It really has to do with the situation I'm in, in terms of making it loud or keeping it soft. Things like... Are there a lot of people in my house? Is it a period where I'm by myself a lot?... Those are things that go into what kind of song I write. But I'm really just happy to write any kind of song. I don't care at all whether it's [a ballad or a rocker].

How much of your writing is autobiographical, and how much of it draws on empathy, or putting yourself into the soul of an imagined person?
Which album are you talking about?

Let's stick with the new one.
Probably three-fourths autobiographical, and one-fourth made up.

Does that ever frighten your husband?
(Laughs) It ought to, but it doesn't. I'm really lucky that he doesn't listen much to lyrics, and when he does, he doesn't pay attention to them. Or rather, he does pay attention, but he's a mellow guy. I think he understands what a lot of people don't; he understands what a lot of people don't; namely, that this is a creative expression. He understands that there's a lot of imagination going on, although a lot of it might be drawn from our life.

When Exile In Guyville was released, how surprised were you at how fixated people became on its sexual frankness?
Totally surprised. Totally and completely surprised. It wasn't until I played Lilith Fair this year, when I saw myself juxtaposed with my peers, that I understood why I came across that way. I realized then how shocking it is to stand up there on stage and sing these things to people. As you say, a lot of songwriters learn about writing because they perform, so they understand what kind of effect their words have on audiences, and they understand the effect of their music as well. But I completely didn't have that connection. I just write whatever my little brain can cook up, and my context is a made-up one. In my mind I'll hear it a certain way, and have a certain reaction, and then put it on an album. But it has no bearing with reality whatsoever. On Lilith Fair, I was sometimes performing for a sort of neutral audience. A lot of people were there to see Sarah [McLachlan] or Natalie [Merchant], and they weren't familiar with my work. So to hear something like the early stuff, "6'1"" or even things like [sings] "...and I hated you..." with the band going was really an affront, in a way to the audience. The context is so much different when you come, like I did, from your bedroom, and a good family life, and go into the real world.

Do you think one of the things that made Exile In Guyville especially shocking was the fact that you couched its lyrics in such pretty melodies?
That was the whole "girly-sound" concept. The whole concept behind my earliest work -- the Girly Sound tapes, before I had a record deal -- was really conceptually subversive. It was to mask adult female sexuality in a little-girl package. "Chopsticks" [from Whip-Smart], for instance, is like that. "Chopsticks" is the basis for a really dirty song about real life and adult sexuality. I actually used to speed up vocals so they would sound even more childish.

So that concept was entirely deliberate on your part? You knew what you were doing?
Oh, yes. Conceptually, I knew what I was doing, but in terms of the impact, I didn't have a clue.

If Exile In Guyville came out today, how different do you think the reaction to it would be?
(Laughs) People would probably accuse me of riding on the coattails of Alanis Morissette. They would be like, "Oh, you're just trying to use shock value to jump on the "female sexuality" bandwagon. But I think those are still great songs. I'm sure they would appeal to people, although I don't think they would have the same impact. It would be seen as me trying to ride a wave.