The Daisy Chain Fields Festival in Irvine, CA, on August 29th was seen by many as a passing of the torch between generations of women musicians. Legends like Sarah McLachlan and Stevie Nicks were there, seen to be bestowing current pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan with the patina of Lilith Fair and the ceiling-shattering achievements of a prior generation.

As acts of the women’s musical revolution of the 1990s hit their legacy years, though, they’ve still got plenty to say. On September 8th at the Greek Theater, an hour or so away from where the Daisy Chain Festival took place, Liz Phair and Sleater-Kinney took the stage for night two of their co-headlining jaunt, in very different moments in their careers but each still beloved by their fans.

The tour, cheekily dubbed “The Flannel and the Fury,” is 30 years in the making, pairing two iconoclastic acts of the 1990s: one of the Northwest’s leading lights of the riot grrl scene and the Chicago indie rocker who dropped jaws with her 1991 debut.

But while the keywords – woman-fronted, 90s, indie rock – match, Sleater-Kinney and Phair have taken very different paths to get to 2026, as was visible in their sets at the Greek.

Phair’s career has taken more twists and turns than the average indie rock heroine: beloved for her earliest work, unfairly maligned for having more mainstream ambitions in the 2000s. Her 2021 album Soberish was her first in more than a decade, and this is her first major national tour since a 2023 trek celebrating the 30-year anniversary of Exile in Guyville, an album ranked as one of the best of the 1990s by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.

That Guyville tour remains an inspiration for Phair on this jaunt, if the second night of The Flannel and the Fury is any indication. A full eight songs from the set list appeared on that debut, including “F--- and Run” and “Divorce Song” (both debuted on earlier demo records before inclusion on her debut). No other album got more than three tracks in the performance, and her most recent record didn’t appear at all.

Those Guyville tracks got more muscular in the live setting, with Phair backed by another two guitarists. It created a power-pop by way of the roadhouse sound, especially on “Stratford-on-Guy” and the blush-worthy “Flower” (“I’m sorry to my son,” she joked, before launching into the bawdy track).

But even as the songs got extra backing, the joy and cleverness of Phair’s songwriting is constantly on display. Much has been made of her early-career stage fright, but it’s hard to see hints of it anymore. There’s a devil-may-care aspect to her performance, one that comes with decades of live experience that she didn’t have when Guyville became an out-of-the-box sensation, that makes her compelling.

In contrast to Phair’s Guyville-heavy set, co-headliner Sleater-Kinney crafted a career-spanning show, with seven albums represented across 17 songs, the plurality of which came from the band’s latest album, 2024’s Little Rope. The album’s lead single, “Hell,” even kicked off the festivities, which also featured an almost even split between tracks released before the band’s 2006 hiatus and after its 2014 reunion.

And even though punkish energy dissipates in an outdoor space as large as the Greek, and especially on a sweltering summer evening, the on-stage chemistry and power remain high. Carrie Brownstein jumped around and vamped on “Jumper,” drawing a big reaction from the L.A. audience, while Corin Tucker’s vocal intensity never seemed to waver, even through the wails on the set’s penultimate track “Untidy Creature.”

Even as the setlist reached further and further into the past, the songs still felt relevant. The crowd roared in recognition of “You’re No Rock n Roll Fun,” for instance, and its “Come on, play another song!” exhortation aimed at commercial, often male-dominated, rock – even in an era of women dominating pop charts, it can still feel like a boys club in the rock world. And “Little Mouth,” one the most punk-forward tracks of the evening from 1996’s Call the Doctor, still roared with confrontational energy.

“I feel f---ing lucky to have volume right now,” Brownstein said, before the band ripped into favorite “Dig Me Out,” and even as torches are purportedly passed elsewhere, it’s clear that both Sleater-Kinney and Liz Phair will continue to have space and support to be loud into the future.