Out October 20th via Matador / Remote Control
Today marks 30th anniversary of Liz Phair’s iconic debut album, Exile In Guyville, a record whose impact and resonance has only grown more profound over the last three decades.
This spring, Matador / Remote Control will reissue Exile in Guyville on limited-edition purple vinyl. The 2xLP is available for pre-order now and will be out October 20th.
To celebrate, we’ve made a long-lost studio outtake available to stream. ‘Miss Lucy‘ was recorded with Brad Wood during sessions for Exile in Guyville but left off the album in favor of including ‘Flower.’ An early demo version of the song was made available previously as part of the Girly-Sound tapes.
In November, Phair will celebrate the record by launching a full band US tour and performing Exile In Guyville in its entirety (along with some additional hits) at some of the largest venues of her career.
An 18-track double album loosely framed as a song-by-song reply to The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St., Exile In Guyville was dubbed a classic upon arrival. The album’s profile has only risen in the ensuing years. It is now regarded as an iconic work and a feminist landmark, recently cracking the top ten of Pitchfork’s “Best 150 Albums of the 1990s” (#4) and the top 100 of Rolling Stone’s “Best 500 Albums of All Time” (#56).
In the years following Exile In Guyville, Phair has continued to defy expectations and break barriers. She has released five albums, sold over five million records, composed music for television, and received two GRAMMY nominations. In 2019, she published a memoir, Horror Stories (Random House), which the LA Times called “a raw look at fame, motherhood and aging with all the unbridled honesty of the songs that put the singer in the spotlight in the first place.” On her most recent full-length, Soberish (2021), Phair reunited with Exile in Guyville producer Brad Wood. Variety called the album, “A superior work.” The New Yorker invoked her debut, writing “It often feels just as spontaneous and elemental.”
In 2018, Matador Records reissued Exile in Guyville and released a deluxe box set titled Girly-Sound to Guyville, which included the remastered original album and the first official restored audio of 1991’s Girly-Sound tapes – early Phair works that were self-released on cassette. “Exile remains a kind of sanctified codex for girls: The map that pointed us toward adulthood, or something like it,” wrote Pitchfork assigning the collection a perfect 10.
Today, three decades after the release of her debut, Phair’s influence in contemporary music – and particularly over female voices – resonates more strongly than ever.
Stream / Download ‘Miss Lucy‘: https://lizphair.ffm.
Pre-order Exile In Guyville 30th Anniversary Edition: https://lizphair.ffm.
Liz Phair – Exile In Guyville
1. 6’1″
02. Help Me Mary
03. Glory
04. Dance of the Seven Veils
05. Never Said
06. Soap Star Joe
07. Explain It To Me
08. Canary
09. 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
Liz Phair – Exile In Guyville 30th Anniversary Edition is out October 20th via Matador Records / Remote Control Records.
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