Exile in Guyville Turns 15 This Month…

… which means that I am a withered crone and did not even realize it.

Liz-Phair-Exile-In-Guyville-608x608

Exile in Guyville is being re-released in honor of the upcoming anniversary (with extra tracks, a documentary, all that). Here’s an in-depth interview with Liz Phair about the re-release.

That album means a lot to a lot of people, and I’m one of them. It’s an awesome record, and was quite revolutionary at the time. I still remember the goosebumps I got when I heard some of the tracks for the first time. The music is, if anything, under-produced, but it was her lyrics that got me. (I know I’m showing my age by calling it a “record” but that’s what it actually was at the time.) She was a smarter bitchier sexier version of all the female musician images clogging our airwaves now: a little bit scary, maybe more damaged, but more herself, with a mind cold and distant. She is vulnerable, but not necessarily soft. She was really saying something on that album, and saying crap that a lot of people didn’t want to hear then and still don’t want to hear.

I am one of those fans of Liz Phair who did NOT feel betrayed by her later albums, although there’s something raw and almost scary about Exile in Guyville (not to mention something scarily akin to my own experience at that time in my own life) that is not there in the later albums, but that’s par for the course with an artist’s journey. When you’re young and desperate and NOT famous, you sometimes have more courage and honesty and fame brings its own rewards, but also lessens some of that desperation. Not to mention growing up and having kids and all that. But Exile in Guyville was a singular event, one of those albums that came along and expressed a truth about a certain KIND of person, in a certain KIND of environment.

Not all women are going to relate to the images of womanhood that Liz Phair exposes and expresses in Exile in Guyville. You may feel shocked, or judgmental.

But if you do relate, you’re hooked for good because there were not a lot of other women out there doing what Phair did at that time. Liz Phair brings to the forefront a messy and complicated and beautiful woman – someone like Chrissie Hynde, perhaps, except Liz Phair does it in a mid-90s context, as opposed to a 70s and 80s context.

Liz Phair is strictly Generation X, and so am I. We are poster children for the cliches of our generation. We’re about the same age. We were in Chicago at the same time. Hanging out (in some cases) in the same crowd. The album came out as I was going through it, so listening to it for the first time was one of those uncanny “Did she read my diary??” moments.

Like “Mesmerizing”, one of my favorite tracks:

You said things I wouldn’t say
Straight to my face, boy
You tossed the egg up
And I found my hands in place, boy
After backing up as far as you could get
Don’t you know nobody parts two rivers met?
Don’t you know I’m very happy?
You know me well
I’m even happier
I like it
I like it

With all of the time in the world to spend it
Wild and unwise, I wanna be mesmerizing too
Mesmerizing too
Mesmerizing to you

That’s so damn honest. I want to thank her for being honest, because it gave me the possibility of seeing what I was doing as well, and being honest about it. I wanna be mesmerizing too. I am wild and unwise. I wanna be mesmerizing too. To you. Yes!

I listen to Exile in Guyville and it still calls up that time in my life perfectly. My perception of it may be different now, I may be sadder, and have more regrets but the experience of the album is the same.

She’s a smart cookie. She has just grown as a songwriter in the years since. I’ll be a fan forever.

Listening to it today, the album still holds up a dark mirror, it still delves into womanhood – the Gen X brand of womanhood – that feels acutely and scarily right to me, and it still expresses the joy and loneliness and wildness of that time in my life in a way that is almost too intense.

I love Phair’s comment in the article above about going to Oberlin:

So I came to Oberlin having a Lady Di haircut, wearing acid-wash jeans with flowers on them—like, “€œHi! I’m Liz! And I wear really strong blue eyeliner!” And I got my ass kicked by all these New Yorkers. The zeitgeist on that campus changed my perspective completely on gender and bravery.

I’ll say. Brave brave artist.

So happy birthday to Exile in Guyville – an album that still has the capacity to freak me out.

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39 Responses to Exile in Guyville Turns 15 This Month…

  1. Cullen says:

    I adore this album, and I am one of those who felt betrayed by later albums. I guess it’s because I didn’t feel the same connection with her. It’s probably because I’m a guy. But I was also (and still am) more fond of what PJ Harvey and Kim Deal were/are doing.

    That said, Liz Phair was a very important artist then. She (along with Harvey and Deal) were doing and saying things that other female bands/singers were only pretending to (I’m thinking of Hole, L7 and Veruca Salt) or ignored entirely (Concrete Blonde, Natalie Merchant). I mean, what girl at the time was writing songs like Fuck and Run. Amazing (thinking about what music is today) that this was only 15 years ago.

    Interestingly, Pandora pulled up the Cardigans, Cowboy Junkies and Alanis Morissette as similar to Phair. Not sure I agree.

  2. red says:

    Cullen – So glad you showed up with your perspective – thank you!!

    I totally hear what you’re saying about PJ Harvey and Kim Deal – I see what you mean. I guess I just felt that maybe Liz Phair wanted to move on from her scary slut persona … and see what else she had to say. Not sure. I do like a lot of songs off her later albums – but nothing (to me) compares to Exile.

    And about the comparisons listed: maybe I’d concede The Cardigans but Cowboy Junkies?? Nothing against them, but not a chance!! And I’m actually an Alanis fan but I don’t find her scary like I find Liz Phair scary.

    And yeah. Fuck and Run. Great song. Scarily accurate, from my perspective.

  3. red says:

    And I love Stratford On Guy, too – but the whole album is just killer. Hard to pick a favorite.

  4. Cullen says:

    So, I just pulled up Liz Phair and PJ Harvey’s discographies and I find even more interesting now to see that both their seminal albums came out in ’93. Seems like that was the breakthrough year for women in rock.

    Since popular rock had been such a cockfest for so many years, it was only a matter of time. Cool that Harvey and Phair served as that catalyst.

  5. red says:

    Wow!!

    Also – that they didn’t portray themselves as mincing little boy-toys, despite the fact that they were having sex and writing about it … there was something fierce and forbidding about them. Nobody’s “toy”, that’s for sure!

  6. Brendan says:

    I encourage EVERYONE who is a fan of this album to somehow find it in their hearts to listen to her later work in a new way. I actually think she has IMPROVED with each album, even the one in which she co-wrote a lot of the material with The Matrix songwriting team.

    I wrote a whole post about her on my blog called “Who Said Life Wasn’t Phair?” When all is said and done there will be no quibbling about her work. She is one of the greats and proving it with each new release.

  7. Brendan says:

    sorry about the all caps, i get excited.

  8. red says:

    Excitement is great! I love her. I can see where the betrayal came from, actually. But I do really like a lot of her later songs – Extraordinary, Rock Me, Stars and Planets, and others. The albums themselves don’t have as much searing personality as Exile in Guyville did – which was basically like a novel, or autobiographical tell-all … but still, I’m really psyched to see Exile in Guyville being re-released and having more attention paid to it. Makes me happy!

  9. Cullen says:

    Here’s a real wow: 1993 in music.
    Harvey in May, Phair in June, Bjork in July, the Breeders in August, PJ Harvey again in October, and Queen Latifah in November. Damn.

    Now, take a look at 1995 in music:
    Belly in Feb, Harvey in Feb, Jewel in Feb (meh, but still), Elastica in March, Juliana Hatfield in March, Alanis Morissette in June, Tripping Daisy in June, Garbage in August, The Gathering in August, Lisa Loeb in Sept, No Doubt in Oct, Sarah Brightman in Dec.

    The field certainly grew.

  10. red says:

    Cullen –

    Tracy Bonham (another favorite of mine) has a lot of interesting things to say about that whole time period in music – she benefitted from it (with her “Mother Mother” song which got major radio play) – and then there was a retraction, it was almost like – once the Britney Spearses (and her ilk) took over the landscape, there was no room for anyone else (female-wise, I mean). That’s an exaggeration, of course – but there is a grain of truth to it – Bonham has gone back to producing her own albums or going with small record labels and I have to say, as a fan of hers – I LOVE the results!!

  11. Cullen says:

    Yeah, I think you see that pretty much across the board for those “alternative” female artists of that era who are still putting out albums today. Heck, even a lot of the guys.

  12. Cullen says:

    Oh and I “”‘d alternative because I’m not terribly fond of the term, but it does help identify the artists I’m speaking about.

  13. red says:

    Totally! Sometimes having a bit more freedom as an artist is better than having the power of a giant label behind you.

    Patty Griffin (another singer I love) was trapped in her contract for years – she refused to complete the album they wanted her to complete … blah blah … typical story … Her first album was on a small label, and was soooo good, powerful, raw … Then she went with a bigger label, and her second album sounded over-produced and not like the same person at all. So she refused to play along – and just toured, made no more albums – until Dave Matthews finally brought her onto his label, and said to her, “Go back to what you want to do. Make the album you want to make.”

    Needless to say, her stuff has been MUCH better since she downsized a little bit. Not everybody is going to fill stadiums and that’s okay.

  14. red says:

    And I’m not a huge Dave Matthews fan (at least not of his music) but I will love him forever for his generosity towards Patty Griffin. He was like, “Enough. They’re making you make dumb albums. Here. Do your thing. Do what you want to do.”

  15. Mitch says:

    it was almost like – once the Britney Spearses (and her ilk) took over the landscape,

    I remember reading an interview with Jennifer Trynin – another one of those women from that era (I loved “Good For Now”, although the rest of the album wore me out) – writing about getting dropped from her only major-label deal. I don’t have the quote – but closely paraphrasing, it was something like “…and the label signed Alanis, and it was like ‘OK, we only need one angry chick’, so blammo, I was outta there…”.

    poster children for the cliches of our generation. We’re about the same age. We were in Chicago at the same time. Hanging out (in some cases) in the same crowd.

    Kinda why I love Tim by the ‘Mats, and Darkness… by Bruce.

    Oh, yeah. And while I’m hot and cold on the album as a whole, “Never Said” is one of my ten favorite singles of the decade. Which is a post that’s just dying to happen, here.

  16. red says:

    Mitch – I love Never Said!! I’m clean as a whistle, baby! haha Love the melody, too – it has a “nyah nyah nyah” feel to it, which I love.

  17. Ken says:

    Great CD–still have it, still listen to it. Also have Whip-Smart on vinyl…white vinyl, as it happens. We just saw the Breeders, about three weeks ago.

    The Exile lyric that always jumps into my mind first is from “Dance of the Seven Veils:”

    So Johnny my love
    We got us a witness
    Now all we gotta do is get a preacher
    He can probably skip the “until death” part
    ‘Cause Johnny my love you’re already dead

    Also, “Divorce Song” is amazing: I could listen to it a million times, but it’s still painful in a way…like eavesdropping inadvertently.

  18. Cullen says:

    Gah! I wish The Breeders were coming through Memphis. I saw them in ’93 opening for Nirvana which is more poignant in retrospect, of course. But I was there to see The Breeders. Never got to see Phair live.

  19. red says:

    Ken – Jealous of you seeing The Breeders!

    I love Whip Smart, too – I was so damn psyched when it came out and I liked it! I was nervous Exile to Guyville would have been just a freak of nature.

    Supernova cracks me up. Love it – the typical mix of Liz Phair loneliness, horniness, and tenderness – the “flying, giant friction blast” and:

    Your kisses are as wicked as an F-16
    And you fuck like a volcano, and you’re everything to me

    It’s that last line – that “you’re everything to me” that really sets Liz Phair apart, in my opinion.

  20. red says:

    And Cullen – totally jealous of you seeing Breeders and Nirvana in one night! Great stuff.

  21. Brendan says:

    Argh! Breeders and Nirvana! wow.

    i saw liz phair do a short set for charity at the knitting factory in LA…very low key, unadvertised, etc.

    she was great. she can’t play guitar worth a lick but what she does play is chock full of meaning.

    and her band mates were great, sort of holding the song up so she could perform it however she intended at that moment. it was a great mix of raw and polish which is what is so strange and wonderful about her stuff.

    and ‘little digger’? anyone know that song? it will break your heart when you hear it…

  22. Carrie says:

    If I were like a smart executive or something, I would read this re-release, in combination with the box-office take of Sex and the City as *the* time to hit it for intelligent women with something to say, as obviously there is a huge, relatively untapped market for it. Or maybe what S&TC shows (the sucess of the movie) is that those of us buying and loving all those quirky smart and real ballsy women 15 years ago are still out there, ready to support more of the same?

    Sort of a tangent but I think we are in for another wave of women-centric music etc if I am reading the tea-leaves correctly. :-)

  23. Brendan says:

    totally…i think it’s already happening…

    amy winehouse, duffy, katy perry, MIA, all the big breaking acts right now are young women…kt tunstall, etc.

    no one wants to hear 23 year old dudes singing at their shoes anymore!

  24. red says:

    Bren – I can barely deal with Little Digger. I think I’ve only listened to it once. It was too intense!

  25. red says:

    Carrie – Amen, sister!! I think what my brother says is accurate – many of the newest performers are women who are NOT of the Britney Spears ilk (and please, I love me some Brit Brit, too – but there’s gotta be room for more images of women than that!!)

    AND the music isn’t of the soulful introspective Indigo Girls/Sarah Mclachlan genre – which also has its place – but not always, come on!!

  26. Brendan says:

    i am such a lucky dude…i got to hug liz phair and tell her how much that song meant to me as a divorced dad.

    seriously a highlight of my life.

    she smelled really good.

  27. red says:

    Bren – and let’s put Siobhan O’Malley on that list too!

  28. red says:

    Bren – I didn’t hear that story!!! Almost as good as you and Paul Westerberg bonding over how good the Spongebob movie was. Ha!!

  29. Brendan says:

    yeah! siobhan o’malley!

    i don’t know if you read my blog today but i’m writing (much like you’ve done) about the songs that come up on shuffle…

    siobhan’s ‘avenue c’d’ came on. just brilliant.

  30. Another Sheila says:

    Oh, this explains all the Liz Phair they’ve been playing on XRT lately! Hearing “Help Me Mary” on the way home from work yesterday sent me into a major reverie and prompted me to get out my Exile disc, which should honestly have holes in it for as much as I played it for a few years there (“those” years, the ones her songs were chronicling with such eerie, brutal, specific, perfect truth.) Yes to everything you said: a scary, stunning, awesome album.

  31. Carrie says:

    Ok, I saw this video by the Ting Tings the other day and only half paid attention to it, so I don’t know the name of it, but I swear in the middle of it she sort of sings a Liz Phair song, am I right or was I just hearing things?

  32. Carrie says:

    This just seemed the place and time to ask given the gathering of Phairophiles happening here. :-)

  33. Ken says:

    Well, the Breeders better play Cleveland, they’re from frakking Dayton. :-) They had their folks in the audience for the show that night, and played a bunch of Amps songs as well as Breeders.

    Years — many years — ago, I went to see Guided by Voices at a place called the Euclid Tavern (alas! the Euc, gone but not forgotten), and Kim Deal snuck in and did a couple of songs with them.

    I recommend the newest Breeders (Mountain Battles). It’s more like Pod or even the Pixies, than Last Splash (which is still my favorite, but I like the variety).

  34. Dan says:

    I love Liz Phair. I think Supernova is the best thing she’s ever written: lyrically smart and catch as all hell.

    Unrelated: did you see this yet: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91891808&ft=1&f=1032

  35. Mitch says:

    i got to hug liz phair and tell her how much that song meant to me as a divorced dad.

    Ironically, that’s probably one of the reasons Guyville didn’t click with me. My marriage was going through one of its spate of brutal pre-divorce spasms where I was faced with just how few options I, as I guy, had. Hearing the album – and, mostly, hearing the critics – I was all “I’ll show you ‘need some friggin’ empowerment, you bastards'”.

    It’s grown on me over the years since then.

    And I love “Supernova”.

    And maybe it was the kid thing, but I loved Whitechocolatespaceegg.

  36. red says:

    Dan – Yeah, Supernova is a kick. I really relate to that song. That’s what love feels like to me (when I have been in love, I mean).

    And I hadn’t heard that about Jefferson’s library – amazing!!!

  37. red says:

    Another Sheila:

    Help Me Mary … God, what a great song. It is a time travel album for me. Johnny Sunshine is another favorite.

  38. red says:

    Oh, and “Flower”. I love “Flower”. Creepy song … so open that it shocked me when I first heard it – and I’m not easily shocked. The way she has herself singing up high, in this unearthly voice, slow – and then another track of herself, singing the melody low in an almost monotone … Awesome stuff.

  39. Ken says:

    The arrangement on that song was astonishing. How the heck do you conceive of something like that in the first place, and then execute it so it doesn’t seem contrived? I’m pretty conventional as songwriters go, so I really admire people who aren’t and can pull it off.

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