“Exile in Guyville” at Twenty (New Yorker)...

Interesting take on Liz Phair's iconic album (her "answer record" to the Stones' Exile on Main Street), prompting JK to revisit.

by Bill Wyman

Twenty years after its release, two things are apparent about Liz Phair’s début album, “Exile in Guyville.” The first is that the record is still worth listening to. If you haven’t heard it recently, “Guyville” is many things. It’s an eighteen-song record of what used to be called indie rock, arguably the quintessential example of the form. It was conceived and written by Phair when she was a twenty-five-year-old Oberlin graduate, and then reconceived as an impressionistic, atmospheric song cycle in a Chicago recording studio by a young producer named Brad Wood.

The second point that seems obvious about “Exile” is that Phair, in some fundamental way, did not live up to the album’s promise. More than a few great songs followed—I’m thinking of the unforgettable “Bloodkeeper,” from the EP “Juvenilia”; the high melodicism of “May Queen”; the chirruping production of the title song on “Whip-Smart”; the lulling, troubling acoustic triumph “Perfect World,” on “Whitechocolatespaceegg”; and a few more.  So it’s not precisely that Phair’s artistry collapsed. My theory, in the end, is that she was not to be possessed of whatever that stuff is that one needs to be actual star.(Read more)

Track Listing (full album on YouTube):

1. 6'1''

2. Help Me Mary

3. Glory

4. Dance of the Seven Veils

5. Never Said

6. Soap Star Joe

7. Explain It to Me

8. Canary

9. Mesmerizing

10. Fuck and Run

11. Girls! Girls! Girls

12. Divorce Song

13. Shatter

14. Flower

15. Johnny Sunshine

16. Gunshy

17. Stratford-On-Guy

18. Strange Loop