Consumer Guide Album

Liz Phair: Juvenilia [Matador, 1995]
One Whip-Smart remix, one new wave cover, and one undeveloped new song no more fascinating than the five old Girly Sound demos that are why any noncollector should hear this CD. The hands-down keepers are the dirty joke once removed "California" and the cowboy-Iggy "South Dakota," but all are a respite from her persona, her career, her sacred mission--none of which she chose, exactly, but none of which she's shown any knack for averting. Here she's the least she deserves to be--a fecund oddball so full of ideas that creaky execution is part of the excitement. In other words, an important minor artist. A−