Quiet Grrls

CALL US INSENSITIVE, BUT when we first heard about Lilith Fair we had one reaction: run. A six-week tour opening July 5 and made up entirely of female singer-songwriters and female-led bands, Lilith Fair, at first glance, has the touchy-feely feminist vibe of a grown-up slumber party in the woods. There will be girl-friendly artsy-craftsy booths (pottery, handcrafted jewelry) and corporate sponsors donating money to girl-friendly charities. The roster of performers reads like a who's who of political correctness: pious heavyweights Tracy Chapman and Indigo Girls, fragile young flowers Jewel and Fiona Apple, brainy pop-thinkers Suzanne Vega and Shawn Colvin. Festival or- ganizer and headliner Sarah McLachlan is one of the most unabashedly sensitive artistes in the business: her new single, ""Building a Mystery,'' from her forthcoming album ""Surfacing,'' contains enough dark/light imagery to occupy a literature class at Bard College. ""I just thought it would be so great to offer a forum for women in music to get together and create some sort of community,'' says McLachlan. This isn't entertainment - it's therapy.

But if Lilith Fair is full of airy-fairy hoo-ha, then how has it become the most talked-about, anticipated and across-the-board embraced concert event of the year? Industry veterans are already blowing kisses. ""This is the first time women in rock music have been celebrated on tour, and that's exciting,'' says Gary Bongiovanni of the trade magazine Pollstar. Agents say tickets are outselling boy-dominated competitors like Lollapalooza (Tricky, Korn), H.O.R.D.E. (Neil Young, Beck) and R.O.A.R. (Iggy Pop, Bloodhound Gang). Hyperbolic rumors are flying: ""Did you hear D. A. Pennebaker [director of the 1967 Bob Dylan documentary, ""Don't Look Back''] is filming the second half of the tour?'' exclaimed one publicist. (As it turns out, he's not, but the promoters are negotiating a film deal.) Marty Diamond, a booking agent and one of McLachlan's ""money men,'' noticed the tide of good will last summer, during a round of practice shows. ""At the end of the night people were in each other's dressing room, goofing around,'' he says. ""The spirit of community was just . . . bizarre.'' Even artists who try to stay away from gender-specific projects are being won over. British songwriter Beth Orton asked to have the list of participants read to her. After she'd heard the names Cassan- dra Wilson, Emmylou Harris, Victoria Williams and two dozen others, there was dead silence. ""I'm sorry,'' she said, ""but that's brilliant.'' Lilith Fair offers something rare, even uncool: naked good intentions and unbridled sincerity. In the blockbust-er-packed, action-overloaded, marketing-ridden summertime, those qualities stick out even more. Lilith Fair has posed itself as a macho antidote, but it's something more: a thoughtful alternative. When Korn is turning up the angst and amplifiers on Lollapalooza, Jewel will be standing at Lilith Fair with an acoustic guitar, spilling out wordy, self-conscious ramblings about what a lousy, mean, uncaring, narcissistic society we are. While pink-chested beer-guzzlers elbow past people on their way to Lollapalooza's mosh pit, Lilith Fair attendees will be gaping at the stage in rapture, singing ardently with every word. Touchy-feely? Yes. Civilized, too. Moreover, the tour's financial success is bound to give female performers added clout in a business that continually marginalizes them. ""My last record came out at the same time as Tori Amos,'' says McLachlan. ""I was constantly getting pitted against her. Radio said, "We added Tori this week, so we can't add you.' They never said, "We added Pearl Jam, so we can't add Nirvana'.''

Lilith Fair is the center of what's becoming an entire culture of introspection. Maybe it's kismet, the cyclical outgrowth of two years dominated by angry, confrontational women in the Courtney Love/Shirley Manson/ riot grrl vein. Sinead O'Connor (who's not in Lilith Fair) just released a disarmingly tender EP, ""Gospel Oak.'' O'Connor is hardly the apologetic type, but there's something conciliatory about her gentleness here: these songs are grown-up lullabies and prayers, with not a rant about the Irish potato famine among them. McLachlan's ""Surfacing,'' due July 15, offers her trademark portraits of interiors, but they're inscribed in such soundly confident and commercial folk-rock tunes that you just might forget they're meaningful. She effortlessly combines the boho snifflings of Joni Mitchell with the formulaic precision of Carole King's great '60s Brill Building work. It's poetry and pop, happy together.

Other Lilith Fairers bring together wildly divergent elements. Katell Keineg's new album, ""Jet,'' meshes rock muscularity and heady emotionalism, Middle Eastern scales and Springsteenish anthems. We haven't graduated to the literary complexity of the 5i-minute opus ""Battle of the Trees'' yet, but we know a good riff when we hear one; by the time the song sweeps into its exquisitely layered crescendo, we're deep inside. ""Music has gotten very hard,'' says Keineg. ""I don't mean hard rock, but hard as in, "Hey, I don't care.' An emotional asceticism. It's quite comfy not to have feelings. But it's a cop-out.'' Paula Cole's vocal flutter-kicks and strident self-revelations can be excessive, but she has a technician's feel for melodic interplay, as well as a healthy sense of irony. Her top-10 single ""Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?'' longs for impossibly simplistic male-female roles: ""I will do the laundry if you pay all the bills,'' she sings. Cole says, ""I'm really happy to see some femininity in the music world. There's a need for more yin, more balance.''

If Lilith Fair has a flaw, it's too much yin. Despite the enormous revolving cast of performers, there's virtually no R&B and a shortage of soul. When up-and-comer Beth Orton shows up for five dates in early August, she'll pack more edge than most of the rest of the tour combined. Her debut album, ""Trailer Park,'' on Dedicated/BMG, resolves the angry-vs.-sweet issue by dressing dark sentiments and heartbreak in beautiful swaths of cello, dulcimer and Hammond organ. ""I told you I loved you/You beat my heart black and blue,'' she sings in ""Sugar Boy,'' in a voice like a street-tough Linda Thompson. ""This album was written out of chaos,'' Orton says. ""I had a very violent boyfriend, I had a lot of s--- going on - I don't really want to go into it. But for me, I had to find love in the world, and I did it with these songs. Love isn't about pansies and daffodils. Love is hard core. It doesn't float around and make your life all pretty - it puts you to the test.'' Call it therapy, entertainment or revolution, but it feels right. And we're converted.

YAHLIN CHANG and KATE CAMBOR

© 1997