POP MUSIC REVIEW : Phair Shows the Power in Simplicity

Liz Phair has forged a career from being in-your-face.

The singer-songwriter became one of this year’s star arrivals in the underground rock world with her debut album “Exile in Guyville,” in which she takes the basic details of life--one-night stands, stupid boyfriends, messy roommates--and turns them into emotional bombs.

Phair has also come across as aggressive and flamboyant in her interviews and photos, subverting the expectations created by her college-rock appearance and her upscale background--the 26-year-old singer is the product of a well-to-do Chicago suburb.

But instead of an in-your-face performer, the Phair who made her L.A. debut over the weekend with virtually identical sets at McCabe’s on Friday and the Troubadour on Saturday was decidedly low-key and reserved.

Rejecting both a rock ‘n’ roller’s bravado and a folkie’s easy patter with the audience, Phair relied on a no-frills, straightforward stance. Phair played rhythm guitar and was flanked by three backing musicians (including drummer Brad Wood, the co-producer and engineer of “Exile”), who drove her simple songs with a tight, fuzzed-out power.

Her themes of confusion are echoed in her lopsided sense of melody, and her voice would regularly escape its flat, Suzanne Vega-like detachment and release its pent-up anger in an exultant high range. There’s an empowering drive to the music, which combines a folk-rock simplicity with post-punk’s aesthetic of imperfection.

Phair is inexperienced at playing in front of an audience, and she’s clearly in the process of jumping that hurdle--by the end of Saturday’s show, some of the nervousness she showed the previous night had disappeared. Still, she seemed vocally inhibited on stage, which meant that her many moods--from sensitive and hurt to crass and angry--weren’t as well defined as they are on her album.

What did come across was her restless, probing intelligence. She didn’t need to scream out her passions and conflicts--her cool tones and smart lyrics did it for her.

Phair’s remarkably candid songs explore the way a woman’s conditioning collides with her desires and her ambitions for a full life, and she brings the issue alive with imagery that ranges from conversational and reflective to disarmingly blunt--she closed both shows with “Flower,” probably the most graphic come-on ever written by a woman in rock, sung a cappella to make it sound like a bouncy children’s ditty.

But Phair isn’t going for easy shock value. She sings that and other explicit lyrics with a defiant pride--claiming the right to say these things rather than asking permission to use the male-oriented rock vocabulary.

With all this going for her--and with the I-could-care-less-what-you-think attitude she shows on her album--it was surprising that Phair herself appeared so low-key on stage. She almost seemed to be pulling back from the image her music has created, and instead of revealing who she is, her performance added one more character to her many roles. Will the real Liz Phair please stand up?