Liz Phair

A searing rant on the transitional politics of third wave feminism, Liz Phair's piercing 1993 debut still packs a walloping sucker punch some 15 years after its original release. The three meager bonus tracks aren't much for those who already cherish the original (the only memorable one is the nylon-spare "Ant In Alaska") but by rescuing the LP from out-of-print purgatory, the reissue means a whole lot to a new generation of people who will.

Ten years before the blog boom, Phair practiced oversharing as performance art — to
create a virtually perfect debut. Released in 1993, and billed as a song-by-song response to
the Stones' Exile on Main Street, Exile in Guyville was a peep show of sexual and emotional
bravado, conducted over scrappy rock riffs. A 26-year-old indie babe who dropped bons
mots like "I want to be your blow-job queen" (see "Flower"), Phair commanded a... More >