The Psycho Super Goddess is back with a new, slick album. Will the change bring her the commercial success she's always longed for, or alienate her original fanbase to the point where she's back at the beginning?

This was one of those nights that I'm extremely glad that I didn't stall at home and miss out on the evening's opening act.

Rachael Yamagata was one of the most startlingly pleasant surprises in live music I've seen in a while. To think, I almost missed this! A diminutive, cheerful-looking girl skipped out onto the stage with a wave and a smile and took her place behind a keyboard that was draped with a glittering swatch of fabric. On the other side of the stage, a guy in a bowler's hat and a suit (though the formal attire was casually accented by the loosened tie, the wallet chain and the leather wrist cuffs) picked up a guitar, and together, they sailed through the first song.

While the piano is chiming and well-suited, what floored me was the incredible voice that came forth from this girl's lips. While I have no evidence for or against this fact (and far be it from me to start rumours!), it sounds like she might have spent the better part of her life smoking too many cigarettes and drinking too much whiskey. She has a smoky, dusky voice, full of emotion, and not unlike a Janis Joplin. The melody of her vocals and the music bordered on bluesy at times, and the voice exhibited a unique breathy crack from one note to the next, with an effortless escalating volume.

She then stood and grabbed up a cabasa for the next tune. A lot of the songs dealt with past loves, sung with a gently-churning fury. The voice still was so unexpected coming out of that frame. Her stagemate was introduced to us shortly as Cameron McGill. He used an E-Bow at times (I have an affinity for the almighty E-Bow), and occasionally wandered close to Yamagata on stage, but mostly he stayed off in the shadows at the side. One song of Yamagata's, which she sung along to her acoustic guitar, with a jaw quiver at the end of every heart-rending line, included the passage, I won't live for you/ or die for you/ or do anything anymore for you, over and over.

Between songs, her charm showed through shiningly. She addressed the crowd and expressed her gratitude at their attendance. At one point, she gave, "A shout out to Alberta!" This scared me for a moment, as I thought perhaps the Chicago-dweller had gotten her provinces backwards and misaddressed the audience. Soon, all was explained. They had gotten a suggestion from a girl named Alberta, to go and have breakfast at the Elbow Room, one of Vancouver's most notable hip eateries where the wait staff is verbally abusive, and don't really wait on you all that much. The tale continued with Yamagata walking into the restaurant and thinking, "What's up with the vibe of this place?" To thank Alberta for her suggestion, the duo invited her to the evening's show, so they just hoped that she had made it. A while later, she gave a brief tale about an ex-boyfriend she had had trouble getting over, but one day, she got bored with thinking about him all the time, and wrote a song about getting over him. The audience erupted in boos when she mentioned that she had invited said ex up to Vancouver to hang out, and he turned her down.

The set was short, and the changeover to Patrick Park's set was pretty quick. It was during this swap that I was suddenly crashed from behind by an exuberant Liz Phair fan who evidently didn't know there was another band to play before Phair came on. She had a poster she wanted signed, and was basically just a major source of entertainment for the next while (even if she managed to hit people all over the place with the poster). She even spotted Yamagata off the side of the stage and screamed and yelled for her for a moment, thinking it was Phair.

Anyhow, somewhere between Matthew Jay and Pete Yorn, one can easily slot Patrick Park. Sweet sweet songs with a bit of a country-blues flair, and his easy finger-picking style on his Gretsch that really pulls the music together and makes it unique. He had with him the same band as the last time I'd seen him play, and performed a similar set list as well. Drummer Sera Cahoone had some sort of monitor troubles between the second and third song, which was quickly discarded, and then taken care of between the third and fourth songs. She's a pretty incredible drummer. Much of the music requires only the barest of drums, but every so often, they kick in, and she shows just how well she can move around that kit.

The California-based (originally from Colorado) Park played his set as beautifully as before, only he get into it quicker than the previous Vancouver show. He seemed energized by the big room and the large crowd in front of him. His voice is raw and carries the tumultuous, naked-though-somehow-vague, lyrical content aptly. By the end of his foot-stomping, rollicking set, the audience had descended into a self-induced clap-along, and gave him the absolute warmest of ovations as he left the stage after a mere nine songs. A stellar musician that you... yes you... should be on the lookout for.

Cue headliner. The over-excited fan beside me was trying to squeeze her friend in with her and doing a great job at bugging the stage tech by bopping him in the head with her poster while he tried to set up a huge array of pedals. She really wanted her poster signed.

After a dark, spotlit intro, Liz Phair stepped out onto the carpeted stage, with her headset-microphone in place, ready to wow the uppity crowd. I've always liked the idea of Liz Phair more than her music. The fiery, liberated woman who manages to still remain a racy sexpot. But her music can really rock out a lot, despite whatever blah suddenly-commercial tendencies she has with her latest album. She's a lot louder than I would have thought, especially with my only past experience seeing her live being a stripped-down set in the notoriously-horrible-sounding, semi-outdoors Plaza of Nations.

She was outfitted in a beige camisole, pink yoga pants with a glittering sequin belt, and mint-green moccasins. She's in spectacular shape, and drips this air of supreme confidence and joy along with her girliness and a touch of smugness. She keeps a guitar on her at all times, even if she's not necessarily playing it at the time. She wanders back and forth on the stage, swinging the guitar around her hips and slipping her hands up and down its neck, extolling all its phallic properties in a somewhat ironic mimicry of the "male guitarist penis extension" theory. And she looks so cheerful doing it, like she knows it's all a big silly joke, but revels in being able to arouse the male members of the audience so simply. Yes, she still sings blatantly about sex, and she keeps the topic playful and saucy in her performance as well. Is she trying too hard in her words to remain controversial and racy into her mid-thirties? That's up for debate, and we're here to look at her show really, not analyze her clinging lyrical youth.

I suppose the only thing that bugged me a bit about her stage presence is that she doesn't quite move around enough to justify that headset microphone. I mean, she moves enough that, if she had a regular mic stand, she wouldn't be at it much of the time, but she's not really doing much of anything so dancey that she couldn't project the same sensuality and lively spirit by standing at a mic stand. She could still pour her hands all over her upper body and molest that guitar for all it's worth without having the sort of microphone normally reserved for high-energy dance-pop artists who fly back and forth all over the stage (whether or not they actually sing into those headsets is beside the point). Phair does make a concerted effort to connect with her adoring crowd though (many of whom brought flowers and notes for her). She looks back and forth, smiling all the while, and makes very wide-eyed and direct eye contact with as many people as she can.

The vocals actually seemed to take a few songs to warm up. Not her voice; that was probably fine. But for the first two songs, her vocals were lost in the mix coming off stage. That was cleared up pretty quickly though, and her voice seemed to get louder if anything as the set drove on. Early in the show, she broke between songs to tell a tale about skiing up on Grouse Mountain but then getting a bit freaked out when the evening rolled around and all the 8th graders showed up and started whizzing past them at top speed on snowboards.

The other band members seemed to fade into obscurity, as no lights were shone upon them. Further through the set, Phair put down her guitar just about the only time in the set, to go take place behind the keys for a song. She introduced her piano-playing by saying that it was her favourite part of her set, because it took her back to her childhood, when she used to have piano lessons, but she'd get bored with the songs she was given to play, so she'd take liberties. She then launched into "Chopsticks." Other songs in her set included "Love/Hate" and "Rock Me," (an amusing tune about a tryst with a younger guy who doesn't even know who Liz Phair is) off her newest self-titled disc, "Uncle Alvarez" and "Johnny Feelgood," both off of the Whitechocolatespaceegg album.

Her encore is mostly noted for its stunning red columns of light and the cover of the Cars "Just What I Needed." She also had the whole crowd engaged in an a cappella singalong of the average everyday sane psycho super-goddess line from her song, "Extraordinary," the opener off of her new disc. After that, it was pretty much over with. The set was lengthy, the fans were into it every second, and all I saw afterwards was a sea of happy faces. Liz Phair is definitely an idol among many.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : April 22, 2004.