Every summer, it seems, I go through my Liz-Phair-regret phase. It’s probably because on our near-annual roadtrips, Liz Phair’s first three albums — “Exile in Guyville,” “Whip-Smart” and “whitechocolatespaceegg” — are still, to this day, in heavy rotation in the car’s CD player.

Besides being full of fun, quirky and complex music, they are powerful and risky feminist statements. And that’s not because they explicitly promote some agenda of empowerment — but because Phair deftly picks at life’s complexities; she is full of desires and doubts, strengths and weaknesses.

My love of these albums made Phair’s sudden but deliberate and self-aware attempt at pop stardom (by eliminating the quirks and dumbing down the lyrics) all the more devastating. It’s been awhile since she made that transformation in her fourth album, “Liz Phair” (2003), and boggled the minds of fans and rock critics alike. If you want to revisit that cultural moment, see the vitriolic critiques by Mim Udovitch in Slate or, from one of her early advocates, Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune.

What makes this summer’s regret phase particularly poignant is that Liz Phair seems to be going through it as well. Or at least that might be a pop psychologist’s take on her 15th-anniversary reissue of “Exile in Guyville” and the accompanying tour in which she plays the entire album. Greg Kot uses the opportunity to revisit the past himself, while Jim Derogatis of the Chicago Sun Times saw her kick-off concert at the Vic Theater and, well, didn’t like it.

While Phair might be trying to make up for some lost time, she still doesn’t seem to fully “get it” — to realize her own contradictions.

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