Exile in Guyville
Exile in Guyville is the debut album by American indie rock singer-songwriter Liz Phair. It was released in June 1993 to widespread critical and commercial success, and it was ranked at 327 by Rolling Stone in its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.[3] As of July 2010, the album had sold 491,000 copies.[4]
| Exile in Guyville | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | June 22, 1993 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 55:51 | |||
| Label | Matador | |||
| Producer | ||||
| Liz Phair chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Exile in Guyville | ||||
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Background
In the summer of 1991, Phair wrote and recorded songs on audio cassette tapes, which she circulated in Chicago using the moniker Girly-Sound. Initially, she sent out only two tapes, one to Tae Won Yu from the band Kicking Giant, and the other to Chris Brokaw.[5] The recipients of the Girly-Sound tapes circulated copies with other early fans.[6]
John Henderson, owner of the Chicago indie label Feel Good All Over, heard the tapes and contacted Phair. Soon she moved into his apartment and started playing her songs to him. Henderson brought in producer Brad Wood to help develop the 4-track demos into full songs. Originally, Phair's recordings were supposed to come out on Henderson's label. However, the whole process was made difficult by the fact that he and Phair had opposite ideas regarding what direction to take in terms of sound. Henderson preferred a stripped-down but precise sound, possibly with outside musicians, while Phair wanted a fuller sound. Phair has stated, "We both wanted something for me. He was projecting onto me what he wanted my music to come out like, which was wrong. So I blew him off." Eventually, Henderson stopped showing up at the studio, which made Phair move out of his apartment and start working exclusively with Brad Wood on what would become Exile in Guyville.
Eventually, a Girly-Sound tape had made it to the head of Matador Records. Despite the outcome of the recording sessions, Henderson tipped off Brad Wood that Matador was interested in Phair. When Matador was contacted by Phair in 1992, they signed her. Gerard Cosloy, co-president of Matador, stated that "We usually don't sign people we haven't met, or heard other records by, or seen as performers. But I had a hunch, and I called her back and said okay."[7]
Recording
After the early sessions with John Henderson, Liz Phair started working with producer Brad Wood at Idful Studios, in 1992. Wood stated, "We did two or three evenings of recording just for fun where we tried to discover something. We recorded "Fuck and Run," and that's when I realized we were on to something. This really spare beat: just guitar, drums and vocals. It was right: simple, driving, direct and blunt. It had so much exuberance." These sessions were thereby very different from the recording sessions with John Henderson. Eventually, engineer Casey Rice joined Idful and started working with Phair and Wood as she had no band of her own.
Initially, there were many time constraints because Phair had moved into her parents' house which was far from the studio, and Wood had to manage his time between his work at the studio and his work as a janitor. However, when Phair signed to Matador, she sublet an apartment close to the studio, which simplified the process.
Regarding the recording process, Casey Rice stated, "We basically all sat around and thought about how to make the guitar and vocals versions of the songs into what we thought would be better ones. Listen to her four-track versions of the tunes, and try to come up with ways of doing them as a 'band'. I do recall there being no lack of candor and if someone wanted to do something, we tried it. If it sucked, no one would hesitate to say so if they believed it."
Brad Wood provided a different recording approach, structuring the drum patterns and bass lines around Phair's vocal phrases and guitar riffs, instead of recording the rhythm section first and then layering the guitars and vocals on top. Phair has commented, "It was fun. Actually we just played our parts separately. I laid down the guitar, and then I would just tell them what kind of song it would be and what kinds of instruments we needed to do. And then they would go in there and figure out a part and then do it. It was more like collage work than really playing with a band."
"Johnny Sunshine" was one of the first songs recorded in 1992 that eventually made the record. The songs "Fuck and Run", "Never Said" (as "Clean"), "Girls! Girls! Girls!", "Flower", "Johnny Sunshine", "Divorce Song", "Soap Star Joe", "Shatter", and "Stratford-on-Guy" (as "Bomb") all originated from a set of home recordings by Phair under the moniker Girly-Sound, and were re-recorded for the album.
Packaging
Phair was also responsible for a great part of the artwork design. Originally, the album cover was largely collage based and involved "a fat lady in a pool". In 2008, Phair stated it was originally "an orgy of Barbies floating in a pool",[8] a concept that Matador rejected, stating that such artwork wouldn't sell. The final cover design is a photo of Liz topless in a photo booth,[8] taken and cropped by Nash Kato of Urge Overkill. The interior artwork is based on that of Lopez Tejera's 1952 album "The Joys and Sorrows of Andalusia". The booklet also features a collage of several Polaroid photos of Phair, Wood, Rice (and various other people), with a paraphrase from lines from the movie Dirty Harry.[7]
Meaning
The term Guyville comes from a song of the same name by Urge Overkill. Liz Phair has explained the concept of the album, saying "For me, Guyville is a concept that combines the smalltown mentality of a 500-person Knawbone, KY-type town with the Wicker Park indie music scene in Chicago, plus the isolation of every place I've lived in, from Cincinnati to Winnetka. All the guys have short, cropped hair, John Lennon glasses, flannel shirts, unpretentiously worn, not as a grunge statement. Work boots. It was a state of mind and/or neighborhood that I was living in. Guyville, because it was definitely their sensibilities that held the aesthetic. […] This kind of guy mentality, you know, where men are men and women are learning. [Guyville guys] always dominated the stereo like it was their music. They'd talk about it, and I would just sit on the sidelines."
Phair has also stated that most songs on the album were not about her. She commented, "That stuff didn't happen to me, and that's what made writing it interesting. I wasn't connecting with my friends. I wasn't connecting with relationships. I was in love with people who couldn't care less about me. I was yearning to be part of a scene. I was in a posing kind of mode, yearning to have things happen for me that weren't happening. So I wanted to make it seem real and convincing. I wrote the whole album for a couple people to see and know me."[7]
Phair commented[9] in interviews that the album was a song-by-song reply to The Rolling Stones' 1972 album Exile on Main St. Some critics contend that the album is not a clear or obvious song-by-song response,[10] although Phair sequenced her compositions in an attempt to match the songlist and pacing of the Rolling Stones album.
Reception
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  |
| Blender | |
| Chicago Sun-Times | |
| Christgau's Consumer Guide | A[14] |
| Entertainment Weekly | A[15] |
| Los Angeles Times |  |
| Pitchfork | 10/10[17] |
| Rolling Stone |  |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| Spin | |
The resulting album was released in 1993, receiving widespread critical acclaim. It was the number one album in the year-end critics poll in Spin and the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll.[20]
Exile in Guyville was also a moderate commercial success. The videos for "Never Said" and "Stratford-On-Guy" received airplay on MTV. By the spring of 1994, it had sold over 200,000 units, peaking at No. 196 on the Billboard 200 and was Matador's most successful release at the time. In 1998, it was certified gold by the RIAA.
Phair reacted to the reception of Guyville, saying "I don't really get what happened with Guyville. It was so normal, from my side of things. It was nothing remarkable, other than the fact that I'd completed a big project, but I'd done that before... Being emotionally forthright was the most radical thing I did. And that was taken to mean something bigger in terms of women's roles in society and women's roles in music... I just wanted people who thought I was not worth talking to, to listen to me." The sudden success of the album also generated a somewhat negative response from Chicago’s indie music scene. Phair commented, "It's odd... Guyville was such a part of indie. But at the same time... I was kind of at war with indie when I made that record." Another problem that arose from her success was also dealing with her stage fright.[7]
Despite this, the album inspired a number of imitators, and the lo-fi sound and emotional honesty of Phair's lyrics were frequently cited by critics as outstanding qualities. It frequently appears on many critics' best-of lists. It was ranked 15 in Spin's "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005". VH1 named Exile in Guyville the 96th Greatest Album Of All-Time.[21] In 2012, the album was ranked number 327 on Rolling Stone's list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[3] In 1999, Pitchfork rated Exile in Guyville as the fifth best album of the 1990s.[22] However, in its 2003 revision of the list, it moved to number 30.[23]
15th Anniversary reissue in 2008
On March 31, 2008, Pitchfork Media announced that Phair had signed a new deal with ATO Records and that her first release for the label would be a special 15th Anniversary reissue of Exile in Guyville, featuring three bonus tracks from the original Guyville recording sessions and an accompanying DVD about the album's creation.
The album, which was out of print, was again available on CD, vinyl and, for the first time, in digital format. The reissue package includes three previously unreleased songs from the original recording sessions: "Ant in Alaska", "Say You", and an untitled instrumental with Phair on guitar (commonly known as "Standing"). A recording of Phair's version of "Wild Thing" (based on the melody of The Troggs song) was planned for inclusion, but dropped at the last moment; the song was later included on the "Girlysound" disc of Phair's "Funstyle" album.[24]
Guyville Redux features Phair and all the people involved with the album, recounting its making and describing the male-dominated, Chicago indie music scene of the early 1990s. Phair interviews, among others, Gerard Cosloy and Chris Lombardi of Matador Records, indie producer Steve Albini, Ira Glass of the public radio program This American Life, John Henderson, Brad Wood, John Cusack (who founded the Chicago avant-garde theater group New Crime Productions) and Urge Overkill.
The reissue was released on June 24, 2008 in the United States and on August 25, 2008 in the United Kingdom.
Track listing
All tracks are written by Liz Phair, except where noted.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "6'1"" | 3:05 |
| 2. | "Help Me Mary" | 2:16 |
| 3. | "Glory" | 1:29 |
| 4. | "Dance of the Seven Veils" | 2:29 |
| 5. | "Never Said" | 3:16 |
| 6. | "Soap Star Joe" | 2:44 |
| 7. | "Explain It to Me" | 3:11 |
| 8. | "Canary" | 3:19 |
| 9. | "Mesmerizing" | 3:55 |
| 10. | "Fuck and Run" | 3:07 |
| 11. | "Girls! Girls! Girls!" | 2:20 |
| 12. | "Divorce Song" | 3:20 |
| 13. | "Shatter" | 5:28 |
| 14. | "Flower" | 2:03 |
| 15. | "Johnny Sunshine" | 3:27 |
| 16. | "Gunshy" | 3:15 |
| 17. | "Stratford-on-Guy" | 2:59 |
| 18. | "Strange Loop" | 3:57 |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19. | "Ant in Alaska" | 5:48 | |
| 20. | "Say You" | Lynn Taitt | 3:25 |
| 21. | "Instrumental" | 3:29 |
Girly-Sound to Guyville: The 25th Anniversary Box Set
On March 15, 2018, Phair revealed that her former label Matador Records would be reissuing the album in celebration of its 25th anniversary. The reissue consists of the original album remastered and Phair's three Girly-Sound demo tapes, marking the first time that the full set of demo tapes would become available for official purchase. The reissue was released on May 4, 2018 in four formats; the physical LP box set, the digital deluxe edition, as well as cassette and CD pressings.[25] Absent from the reissue are the two Girly-Sound demos "Shatter" and "Fuck or Die," as Phair was unable to get the samples used in both songs approved.[26]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "6'1"" | 3:07 |
| 2. | "Help Me, Mary" | 2:16 |
| 3. | "Glory" | 1:30 |
| 4. | "Dance of the Seven Veils" | 2:30 |
| 5. | "Never Said" | 3:16 |
| 6. | "Soap Star Joe" | 2:44 |
| 7. | "Explain It to Me" | 3:12 |
| 8. | "Canary" | 3:20 |
| 9. | "Mesmerizing" | 3:56 |
| 10. | "Fuck and Run" | 3:08 |
| 11. | "Girls! Girls! Girls!" | 2:20 |
| 12. | "Divorce Song" | 3:20 |
| 13. | "Shatter" | 5:29 |
| 14. | "Flower" | 2:03 |
| 15. | "Johnny Sunshine" | 3:27 |
| 16. | "Gunshy" | 3:15 |
| 17. | "Stratford-on-Guy" | 2:59 |
| 18. | "Strange Loop?" | 4:00 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "White Babies" | 3:06 |
| 2. | "Shane" | 4:46 |
| 3. | "6 Dick Pimp" | 3:19 |
| 4. | "Divorce Song" | 3:47 |
| 5. | "Go West" | 3:28 |
| 6. | "Don't Holdyrbreath" | 3:59 |
| 7. | "Johnny Sunshine" | 3:51 |
| 8. | "Miss Lucy" | 2:18 |
| 9. | "Elvis Song" | 4:56 |
| 10. | "Dead Shark" | 3:24 |
| 11. | "One Less Thing" | 4:38 |
| 12. | "Money" | 3:36 |
| 13. | "In Love w/ Yself" | 3:58 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Hello Sailor" | 5:57 |
| 2. | "Wild-Thing" | 3:41 |
| 3. | "Fuck and Run" | 4:31 |
| 4. | "Easy Target" | 5:04 |
| 5. | "Soap Star Joe" | 3:24 |
| 6. | "Ant in Alaska" | 7:12 |
| 7. | "GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS" | 6:56 |
| 8. | "Polyester Bride" | 7:38 |
| 9. | "Thrax" | 4:35 |
| 10. | "Miss Mary Mack" | 4:32 |
| 11. | "Clean" | 3:59 |
| 12. | "Love Song" | 6:20 |
| 13. | "Valentine" | 4:16 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Gigolo" | 3:25 |
| 2. | "Flower" | 2:48 |
| 3. | "Batmobile" | 3:10 |
| 4. | "Slave" | 3:50 |
| 5. | "Open Season" | 2:59 |
| 6. | "Whip Smart" | 3:30 |
| 7. | "Suckerfish" | 1:49 |
| 8. | "California" | 2:51 |
| 9. | "South Dakota" | 4:21 |
| 10. | "Bomb" | 3:21 |
| 11. | "Easy" | 3:16 |
| 12. | "Chopsticks" | 2:00 |
Personnel
As per the liner notes of the 2008 reissue:[27]
- Liz Phair – guitar, piano ("Canary"), vocals, hand claps ("Mesmerizing")
- Casey Rice – lead guitar ("Mesmerizing", "Divorce Song"), cymbal ("Shatter"), background vocals, hand clapping ("Mesmerizing")
- Brad Wood – bass and drums (various songs), organ ("Glory", "Mesmerizing"), synthesizer, ("Explain It to Me"), percussion, bongos ("Explain It to Me"), tambourine and shaker ("6′1""), maracas and hand claps ("Mesmerizing"), background vocals, vocals ("Say You"), drones and feedback ("Shatter"), "sick guitar" ("Gunshy"), guitar ("Say You")
- Tony Marlotti – bass ("Johnny Sunshine", "Say You"), vocals ("Say You")
- John Casey – harmonica ("Soap Star Joe", "Divorce Song")
- Tutti Jackson – backing vocals ("Soap Star Joe")
Charts
Weekly charts
| Chart (1993) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| US Top Heatseekers (Billboard) | 12 |
| Chart (1994) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| US Billboard 200 | 196 |
Certifications and sales
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| United States (RIAA)[28] | Gold | 500,000^ |
|
*sales figures based on certification alone | ||
References
- Bill Wyman. ""Exile in Guyville" at Twenty". The New Yorker.
- Cinquemani, Sal. "Review: Liz Phair, Liz Phair". Slant Magazine. Retrieved October 6, 2019.
- "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. 2012.
- "Ask Billboard: Kylie 'Fever'". Billboard. July 16, 2010. Retrieved February 17, 2012.
- "Liz Phair Biography". Matador Records. Archived from the original on June 15, 2013.
- Reilly, Dan (September 8, 2010). "Liz Phair Releasing Rare Girly-Sound Demos With 'Funstyle' LP". Spinner.
- Wild and Unwise – The Liz Phair Story
- "Liz Phair on 'Guyville' and the Secret to a Successful Topless Photo Shoot". Vulture. June 25, 2008. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
- "He Said, She Said: How Liz Phair Took the Rolling Stones to 'Guyville'". Rolling Stone. New York City: Wenner Media. May 21, 2010. Retrieved January 12, 2016.
- Hultkrans, Andrew (July 2008). "Reissues". Spin. 24 (7): 94. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Exile in Guyville – Liz Phair". AllMusic. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- Sheffield, Rob (June 4, 2008). "Shawty is a 10". Blender. Archived from the original on June 15, 2008. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- DeRogatis, Jim (September 5, 1993). "The Next Big Things On Local Rock Scene". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- Christgau, Robert (2000). "Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville". Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s. Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 0-312-24560-2. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- Aaron, Charles (June 4, 1993). "Exile in Guyville". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- Ali, Lorraine (August 1, 1993). "Liz Phair 'Exile in Guyville' Matador". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- Petrusich, Amanda (May 2, 2018). "Liz Phair: Girly-Sound to Guyville: The 25th Anniversary Box Set". Pitchfork. Retrieved May 3, 2018.
- Kot, Greg (June 10, 1993). "Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on April 7, 2008. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- Kot, Greg (2004). "Liz Phair". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. pp. 633–34. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
- "The 1993 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". The Village Voice. March 1, 1994. Retrieved February 13, 2013.
- 2001 VH1 Cable Music Channel All Time Album Top 100 Archived November 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- Pitchfork's original "Best Albums of the '90s" list
- Pitchfork's 2003 "Best Albums of the '90s" list
- Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. ""Funstyle" overview". AllMusic. RhythmOne. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
- Records, Matador. "Girly-Sound To Guyville". Matador Records. Retrieved May 12, 2018.
- https://twitter.com/PhizLair/status/974382379136512000
- "Liz Phair – Exile in Guyville (2008 CD, ATO Records, ATO0059)". Discogs. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
- "American album certifications – Liz Phair – Exile in Guyville". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved November 10, 2019. If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Album, then click SEARCH.