Liz Phair will play some dates on this summer's Lilith Fair tour, but unlike Natalie and Sarah, she won't be baring her soul or communing with her inner unicorn. Ever since Phair named her 1993 indie-rock masterpiece Exile in Guyville as a goof on the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, she's made a career out of writing deconstructed pop songs with lyrics that would make most pickup artists blush. Her third album, Whitechocolatespaceegg, has a few homemade new-wave songs and vestigial ties to lo-fi rock, but it's sincere as well as sarcastic, mostly because Phair isn't an alt-rock club kid anymore - she's a wife and young mother. She still writes in the hedonistic, gimme-gimme voice of a horny twenty-something, but she's singing more about getting love than getting laid.

True love - especially the everyday and aggravating sort of love - is the subject of eight songs, which easily outnumber her tunes about the birds and the bees (five), headaches (three), trains (two), babies (one), and the importance of "Shitloads of Money" (one). That's more sex, more trains, fewer children, and less love than there is on the new album from rock's other foxy mama, Madonna. But like the Material Girl, Phair isn't really writing about her own life, her own son, or Mr. Phair, although pop psychology majors will have a field day with "Johnny Feelgood." The propulsive song spins through the pleasures of a bossy boyfriend, but it's actually about the joy of knowing exactly what winds your clock. Phair has gone from writing about the imperfection of desire to singing about the white lies we tell ourselves in the pursuit of love and happiness.

Whitechocolatespaceegg isn't as ambitious as Exile. Its pure pop pleasures lie in the way Phair folds witty lyrics into shimmering waves of guitar that mean exactly what she says. She arranges her giddy songs so ingeniously that their left-field hooks are all knockouts, especially the ecstatic riff at the end of "Polyester Bride." The jangly "Love Is Nothing" begins like on of the pickup bar scenarios on Whip-smart, Phair's flawed second album, but it's saved by a sunny bridge and Phair's lyrical realization that a boy at home is worth two in the bar. And since she's singing less self-consciously and more sweetly, "Girls' Room" may be the most lovely song she's ever recorded. It's about leaving adulthood behind for a dreamy night out with the girls.

"Girls' Room" is the most personal song on the album; elsewhere, Phair sings from the perspective of a fictional character. Like several of the album's songs, "Big Tall Man" is written in the voice of a guy. After reciting a list of simple summer pleasures like "sand and the beach," Phair drawls "I can be a complicated communicator," then launches into a joyful, dizzy whirl of power pop.

With Whitechocolatespaceegg, Phair has become less a confessor, like Joni Mitchell, and more of a storyteller. She's joined the ranks of songwriters like Elvis Costello, and Exene Cervenka and John Doe of X, and improved upon Exile in Guyville by finding ways to express everything from mindless happiness to the complex follies of adulthood through the eyes of her fellow man. Phair speaks with so many voices, she could even have taken another shot at the Stones. She could have called this one Some Boys.