It appears reports of the demise of Liz Phair's career were greatly exaggerated.

Last summer, when Phair, who had long been a darling of critics and the indy music scene, released her self-titled fourth CD, it unleashed a torrent of criticism. The CD found Phair abandoning the lo-fi, more intimate sound of her much-lauded 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville for a big, slickly produced, commercial-sounding production.

Even worse, she teamed up with the songwriting trio known as the Matrix (Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards and Scott Spock) to write four songs. Matrix members, of course, were the people responsible for crafting the music on Avril Lavigne's mega-successful debut CD.

None other than The New York Times said Phair was committing career suicide with the CD. Other reviews were just as harsh.

Eight months later, both Phair and her CD are alive and kicking. Liz Phair has yet to become a major hit, although with her song, "Why Can't I?", featured in the new movie, Win a Date With Tad Hamilton, a return to the singles chart could be in the offing. In any event, this spring's tour by Phair is a sure sign her CD is not dead in the water.

And while the furor over the CD has died down, Phair has clearly done her soul-searching over the reaction. In the end, she wondered if her CD symbolized a far bigger disappointment for indy music fans.

"Maybe I was like the last artist down the pike before they had to accept that the music business is not the same, do you know what I mean?" Phair asked. "I think a lot of indie people were hoping for that, that climate that they had in the '90s, to come back again. And I think maybe with my record, it was like just so accepting of the way business is done today that they were like 'NO!!!!'"

That last comment gets to the crux of the dilemma Phair confronted with her current album. In essence, Phair said she decided to work within the major label system by giving Capitol Records what the label wanted -- a few potential hit singles -- in order to buy herself the ability to do other tunes that spoke entirely to her artistic impulses.

"Make your big-screen movie so then you can do your independent features," Phair said. "That's exactly what I'm doing."

She started recording, bringing in Michael Penn to produce. A fine singer/songwriter in his own right, Penn, ironically, has bolted from the major label world and now self-releases his records.

Phair completed a version of the CD with Penn, but after getting Capitol's reaction to the CD, found she also had second thoughts about the project.

"The record I had with Michael, like he's so circumspect about what he works on -- it's a great thing -- but I lost that side of me that's obnoxious and is exuberant in that record," she said.

Phair realized at that point, her only option to get funding for additional recording was to add some commercially viable songs to the CD.

Capitol suggested collaborating with the Matrix. The band's frothy rockers and slick dance pop tunes didn't seem like a good match for the kind of sexually charged and provocative edgy guitar pop that had been Phair's signature, especially on Exile in Guyville and her 1994 follow-up Whip-Smart.

Phair didn't realize she'd already met two-thirds of the Matrix songwriters. When she arrived for her first writing session and Christy answered the door, Phair was pleasantly surprised and knew the collaboration would work.

"Even though it was going to be a pop sound and very different to my sound, I knew that the material we were going to get was both going to be really fun to do," Phair recalled. "And I knew I was going to be able to make the parts that were important to me."

Of course, many music critics haven't been as impressed. The Phair/Matrix songs have especially been vilified -- and, at least to a degree, justifiably so. "Extraordinary" and "Rock Me" are lightweight by Phair's standards, while "Why Can't I?" shares more than a few similarities with the Matrix-penned Lavigne hit "Complicated."

But "Liz Phair has some redeeming material as well. The refreshingly understated and tender "Little Digger" finds single mother Phair dealing unflinchingly with the moment when her young son is trying to understand what an overnight stay by a boyfriend means to his world. The melodic mid-tempo rocker "Firewalker" possesses an especially beguiling melody. The hooky rocker "Love/Hate" offers an unflinching look at sexual politics.

And to Phair, 37, most critics have completely missed the fact that Liz Phair fits entirely within the overall story she's been trying to tell since she first raised eyebrows with the sexually liberated songs on Exile in Guyville.

"My sense of my music is I am telling stories of a girl to woman's life," she said. "Everything about what I do is telling this story of what it was to be me, what it was to be a woman during this time period and how I felt and how my feelings conflicted and the messy truths of a woman's life."

"Going to college, there are not those stories historically of what it was to be female throughout history and how we felt and what we went through and what our lives were. And I'm logging on. That's the essential value of what I do, bottom line."

IF YOU GO:
WHAT: Liz Phair
WHEN: 8 p.m. March 2
WHERE: Roseland Theater, 8 N.W. 6th Ave., Portland
COST: $20
INFORMATION: Call (503) 219-9929 or TicketsWest at 800-992-8499