Liz Phair sayss:he decided some years ago that her first record would be a double album; having heard that Exile on Main St. was a fine example of the form, she immersed herself in it. The title of her eventual debut, Exile in Guyville, is a grateful salute. (The rest of the title is a sardonic nod to the Wicker Park band scene dubbed “Guyville” on the last Urge Overkill album.) The 25-year-old Phair, brash as they come, insists that the songs on her record are designed to be read in an intense and exact song-to-song correspondence with the original Exile: Her 18 songs, she says, should be consumed in 5-4-5-4 bursts matching the original work’s four sides. Indeed, mention a song from the Stones’ Exile and Phair will immediately launch into singsong lyrics, rapid-fire analysis, and intermittent bursts of air guitar to illustrate this or that musical point.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
While no one knows what Exile on Main St. is really about, I’d venture to say that it has something to do with the addictive, debilitating toxicity of things like sex, love, and rock ‘n’ roll. Those are Phair’s subjects as well, but while she acknowledges the dark side of the equation, she runs it all through a giddy, girl-o-centric grinder. Exile in Guyville’s epic contextualization is leavened by an unshakabe pop-rock sensibility (“You can say I like classic rock”) that ties irresistible melodies and friendly, sometimes anthemic guitar riffs to recurring themes of lovesickness, carnality, emotional laceration, and the inter- and intramural gender wars. Her theses are sweeping and cheerfully kaleidoscopic, from postfeminist mournfulness (“Whatever happened to a boyfriend / The kind of guy who makes love ’cause he’s in it?”) to post-postfeminist horniness (“I want to be your blowjob queen”), from dissections of the male psyche (“I bet you you fall in bed too easily”) to her own (“I get away / Almost every day / With what the girls call murder”).
Her voice turns mocking: “‘Pride in your work’–that’s bullshit, I’m midwestern.”
