NEW DOUBLE LP
New sealed copy. 2023 30th anniversary limited edition reissue on purple coloured vinyl.
Liz Phair's debut studio album, Exile in Guyville, was released on June 22, 1993, through Matador Records. Recorded at Idful Music Corporation in Chicago between 1992 and 1993 and produced by Phair and Brad Wood, the album originated from cassette tapes Phair circulated in Chicago under the moniker Girly-Sound in 1991. The title references a song by Urge Overkill, with Phair describing Guyville as combining small-town mentality with Chicago's Wicker Park indie music scene and the isolation of places she'd lived.
Phair stated the album was a song-by-song reply to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. (1972), sequencing her compositions to match that album's songlist and pacing. The cover photo, taken by Nash Kato of Urge Overkill, shows Phair topless in a photo booth after Matador rejected her original concept of Barbies floating in a pool. Music videos for "Never Said" and "Stratford-On-Guy" received MTV airplay.
Exile in Guyville received widespread acclaim, topping year-end critics polls in both Spin and the Village Voice Pazz & Jop. The album became a moderate commercial success, selling over 200,000 units by spring 1994 and earning gold certification in 1998. Critics praised its lo-fi sound and emotional honesty, with Pitchfork rating it the fifth best album of the 1990s. Rolling Stone ranked it number 56 on their 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
TRACKLIST:
A1 6'1"
A2 Help Me, Mary
A3 Glory
A4 Dance Of The Seven Veils
A5 Never Said
B1 Soap Star Joe
B2 Explain It To Me
B3 Canary
B4 Mesmerizing
C1 Fuck And Run
C2 Girls! Girls! Girls!
C3 Divorce Song
C4 Shatter
C5 Flower
D1 Johnny Sunshine
D2 Gunshy
D3 Stratford-On-Guy
D4 Strange Loop?
