Washington Post Review Of "Funstyle"

Ha. After hearing Liz talk about how horrified ATO were, and how she's embraced the skills she's developed as a screen composer, my respect for Funstyle increases every time she talks in more detail about the process involved. It is funny to now look back and think how free she's being with style on the album to the point that it's such a non-traditional, break the boundaries, exercise for her.

This is yet another reviewer who simply falls into the trap of being so rigid in their expectations they can't take very much back from the album. It's great for us who are following the interviews to have more depth into what she was doing, playing with her new instruments from scoring, but really it makes me wonder why these reviewers are actually so terrible at seeing only what they want to see and not the thing for what it is itself.

It's hilarious when they write that Phair even has a song on the album that foretells that people will not like it. I mean, yes, and please continue to not get the brevity or style it was made in, it truly is your loss not hers. The sad part is reading the comments in relation to this album and Girlysound. Instead of seeing any parallels, and at least noting that songs on it were sung from a deliberately child-like manner and the vocals at times sped up, to show the lack of power of female voices in music at the time she wrote Girlsound is just so ironic, because these are songs that are - in part - wrought from having had the same kind of domineering male rubbish imposed on her by the record company in the first place. I mean the reviewer would simply like a template filled out with Ms. Phair simply providing the bridging between their idea of what the album should sound like.

The review bemoans that there were expectations that Liz would be returning to form and that the "real" Liz underneath would be making a return, and yet they totally fail to see how she has, and completely missed the point of what Ms. Phair's music on Funstyle actually does have beneath it, which is very much, of her personality/character/nature. I guess knowing the early work of Ms. Phair really does not mean you have any idea about her at all. It's just a reflection of her at a time, and trying to say all her work should be the same is simply stupid. Good artists always grow over time, rather than reproduce the same thing. Honestly.... Who employs these people?