STACK #200 Jun 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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people are doing book clubs with their families remotely, some people are playing Dungeons and Dragons, and we’re doing Laurie Anderson's Norton lectures together.

On puppeteer Toben Seymour: Here I was working with an artiste of

puppeteering, and he’s just as particular as I am. It was so fun to get a window into the puppeteering struggle, just like I have my own musical struggle. He is wonderful. Can I tell you how weird it is to have a puppet created of me?

The Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson puppets which star in the clip for single Hey Lou

Toben made a Liz Phair puppet; she’s on TikTok, my puppet-self. And now I'm actually imitating my puppet in my look: I had to buy, for the first time in my life, big eyelashes, and I had to grow my hair long and put it up a certain way. On recording inside an anechoic chamber: Acoustics are really interesting to me. I recorded a couple of songs [inside] an anechoic chamber... it's a room constructed within a room, that is actually suspended by bungy-type cords, and it's dampened. There is so much sound baffling that there is no atmosphere, no reverberation, it’s just the pure sound. A lot of people freak out when they go inside it, but to me it’s heaven, because you get this pure thing. On working with producer BradWood, with whom Phair has regularly collaborated ever since her first album: It was about subtraction a lot of times, which is an interesting way to work. We’d throw a whole lot of sh-t on it, and then pull pieces out until it had an interesting sound. Especially songs like Soberish ; we just got rid of my entire guitar, so it has that awkwardness that you feel when you’re waiting for someone to come to a bar, that you only know a little bit, and you’re probably going to sleep with. It has that awkward tension when you’re like, ‘Ah! I feel naked!’ ZKR

INTERVIEW

LIZ PHAIR Immediately heralded as femme-indie-rock's poster-girl upon the release of her acclaimed debut Exile In Guyville (1993), Liz Phair has since macheted through life with the kind of veracity and curiosity which have made her a musical heroine beyond any gender or genre bounds you might fancy applying to her. Here we've selected some of our favourite quotes in conversation about her excellent new album, Soberish – head to stack.com.au to read the full article. Words Zoë Radas

On avant-garde artist, musician and filmmaker Laurie Anderson, who appears in the clip for single Hey Lou in puppet form: I’ve been listening to her Norton lectures – it's a series affiliated with Harvard – and I’ve gotten my mother and my godmother to watch them as well; during the pandemic that’s one of the ways we’ve connected. Some

On matching the nice with the nasty: You know how they say with French perfumes, there’s all this floral and sweetness, but you need something nauseating, something rancid in there? It’s the same with music: you don’t want it to be too on-the-nose, you want it to be pretty, but also kind of ugly – there’s all these aesthetic balance questions, and I just love them.

Soberish by Liz Phair is out June 4 via Chrysalis Records/PIAS.

Read the full interview online at stack.com.au

JUNE 2021

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