Okay so I just got back from the Chicago show. I don't know if I'm going to be the best review since this is the first time I've ever seen Liz (apart from Lollapalooza which I don't really count as a Liz show). So, I was really really happy with the performance. I was in about the third row center and had a great view, which I'm sure helped me to enjoy the evening. The Vic was pretty crowded; Liz even seemed surprised at the crowd.
She came out wearing the World Series jacket she had on during the game Saturday. Any time she really talked it was about the World Series. At one point early in the show she just ran off stage. A few minutes later she came back with a game update. Then later she had a stage tech come on and give a game update.
I thought the crowd was pretty good. Not too many people yelled out requests. A couple for HWC and one for 'underwear' to which she laughed. The crowd would sing along and seemed really into it, especially the older songs, which is really no surprise.
So here's the set list....I'm sure it's wrong and missing songs and not in order, but this is what I could remember.

Everything to Me (acoustic)
Wild Thing (acoustic)--she messed up in the very beginning and had to start over, which was fun and it's stuff like this that makes me like Liz
Baby Got Going (acoustic)--for this one Liz asked Dino what his favorite acoustic song was
Stars and Planets
Headache
Uncle Alverez
6'1"
Help Me Mary
Little Digger--Liz said this was a special request. And that she was playing it becuase she really missed her son
Polyester Bride
Extraordinary
Mesmerizing
Cinco De Mayo
Why Can't I
Lazy Dreamer
Never Said
Divorce Song
Bionic Eyes
Supernova

Longest Intermission Ever
Encore
Flower--there was a really good beginning to this where the band just rocked out for a little while
Fuck and Run
Chopsticks--Liz on the piano and Dino doing some guitar effects

Okay other things...Liz and Dino were both sporting those rings. Standing directly behind me were the three most obnoxious concert goers ever. You really almost ruined the show for myself and everyone around us. Thanks a lot. Liz's voice seemed really strong tonight...I think she might have been playing with a pitch corrector for some of the songs. It was a box on a mic stand next to her mic....maybe I'm wrong. She played her duosonic but only for a few songs. The set seemed really loose. Liz was constantly talking about what songs to do next with the band.

Okay, that's it. Feel free to critique this. I'm sure someone out there will.

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. :')

From The Chicago Tribune:

Phair loses her balance
By Bob Gendron
Special to the Tribune

Just two months ago, Liz Phair came through town, played an acoustic three-night stand and returned to her roots. Supported solely by guitarist Dino Meneghin, she sat atop a bar stool, welcomed requests and focused on material that in the mid-'90s made her the cause celebre of indie-rock culture and feminine sexuality. There were few signs of the singer who after a five-year absence returned in 2003 as a commercialized pop star primarily concerned with flaunting herself as every man's one-night-stand fantasy.

Tuesday night in front of a decent-size audience at the Vic Theatre, Phair and Meneghin began exactly the way they did at their last appearance--stripped-down, unplugged and unaccompanied. After exhaling saccharine emotion on "Everything To Me," she transformed the frat-rock favorite "Wild Thing" into a tale of a spoiled rich girl and felt vibrations from the slide-tuckpointed "Baby Got Going."

But then the remainder of her band entered the picture and promptly turned the rest of the 85-minute concert into a study in contrasts. Juggling between jejune bubblegum-pop and loose rock, Phair usually opted for the former, ultimately forsaking personality and grit in favor of prettiness and politeness. Part of the problem lay with her backing quartet, which had trouble staying on the beat or mustering much energy.

With Phair struggling to simultaneously sing and strum her rhythm guitar, the combo glossed over the contagious bass hooks of "Polyester Bride," ushering the once-resistant protagonist down the aisle via a wedding-march keyboard refrain that deprived the track of meaning. "Uncle Alvarez" was similarly softened with sonic tinsel, while "Cinco de Mayo" stood idly by as decorational wallpaper.

Phair's recent work suffered from the same cloying desperation and obviousness. Oozing with formulaic polish, "Lazy Dreamer" could have been crooned by Sheryl Crow or Hilary Duff. And Phair herself seemed to choke on "Extraordinary," a pick-me-upper so rehearsed it sounded like the former Chicagoan was reciting Hallmark-card greetings rather than crooning lyrics.

Ironically, for all of her claims that she no longer relates to the person who wrote the celebrated Exile in Guyville album, Phair didn't show it onstage, saving her spite, snarl and sarcasm for "Help Me, Mary," "Flower," and "Mesmerizing." It may have been coincidental that these spirited bursts of rawness came after Phair checked the score of the World Series game, but it was more due to the fact that for these brief moments she abandoned her mainstream illusions, let her guard down and came back to reality.

Really great review.

Pitch corrector?

there is such a thing?

so there is a box onstage that changes what you sing if it is wrong? Eerie.

That is most definitely not what that thing is.

It's a $5,000 personal mixer/monitor, so that instead of calling out to the soundman "Can I have more Dino in my ear?" (and there you have your Unpleasant Mental Image of the day), Liz can just walk over to the box and adjust the levels for her personal monitor -- you know, those things she wears in her ears the whole time, and that box she has clipped to her waist.

When I saw her in Philly, she was all over the place, pitch-wise. Just the way I like her.

Ah ok! Got it.

More Dino in mah ear... sounds hairy.

Yeh, you mean the thing that was in my way at the Philly show? I had to twist my neck crazily to see her face.

Some pics from the show: http://nivasgigs.net/lizphair.html