Review Summary: Indie rock at its most shocking, stripped and naked, yet also it is also indie rock at its most unsparingly honest and one of its best.
I knew the name
Liz Phair in a rather unpleasant way, when I came across a video about the countdown of biggest sellouts in music, and I found Liz Phair had a spot in the video, where it described how Phair ditched her indie-rock roots to pop-rock in her self-titled album. Since then, I had a rather negative impression on her, since selling out to a wider audience by ditching your own roots is almost like a death sentence. Until when I read Rolling Stone Magazine's list of 500 Greatest Albums of all time, I found Phair's Exile In Guyvile listed in their list (ranking at number 327), and I was like, "Wait, so this Liz did make a great album that is great enough to land on their list then." And I was rather skeptical about the brilliance of the album, so I go to the iTunes Store to check out the album on how good it is by using their pre-listening services.
To begin with, the opening track " 6'1" " was one scathing break-up song, with Phair scolded her boyfriend about sleeping with other girls ("I bet you fall in bed too easily/ With the beautiful girls who are shyly brave/ And you sell yourself as a man to save") and moaning about she herself had to limit her actions just to keep him happy ("And I kept standing 6'1”/ Instead of five-feet-two/ And I loved my life/ And I hated you"). Phair may not sound like she is scolding when she sings, but pay attention at the words, and you will find there is much more venom than you heard in the song. With the pseudo-country rock guitar and catchy drum loops, " 6'1" " makes one hilarious yet serious opener, a brilliant way to start the album.
The following tracks are also undeniably brilliant and interesting: In "Help Me Mary", Phair begged Mother Mary to save her from being kidnapped and abducted in her home by her boyfriend and his gang, and treated like a slave/an animal ("They make rude remarks about me/ They wonder how wild I would be/ As they egg me on and keep me sad/ They play me like a pit bull in a basement"), and hoped she could destroy them ("And watch how fast they run to the flame"), showing how a girl's limits to stand the manipulation of her partner and his friend, perfectly contrasting against the up-tempo guitar-riffs; the one-minute-and-a-half "Glory" continues the theme of the previous track yet in a more sorrowing way ("Snaking around in the club/ It slicks you down/Scratching his face like a bum/ He pulls you back"), with Phair's vocals are more despairing than "Help Me Mary", showing how badly women are treated and the vulnerability of them; "Dance of Seven Veils" is probably one of creepier and raunchier track in the album, with Phair details her desire to a man named Johnny that she wants to roughen up him ("Johnny, my love, get out of the business/ It makes me want to rough you up so badly/ Makes me want to roll you up in plastic/ Toss you up and pump you full of lead"), while boasting that she's a "a real cunt in spring" and tells him that he can "rent me by the hour" in the hook, which highlighted that even girls can be as horny as men.
Furthermore, in the now-indie-classic track "Never Said", Phair proclaimed she didn't do anything like the swirling rumours suggested ("I don't know where you heard it/Don't know who's spreadin' it 'round/All I know is I'm clean as a whistle, baby/I didn't utter a sound" and "So don't look at me sideways/ Don't even look me straight on/ And don't look at my hands in my pockets, baby/ I ain't done anything wrong")and said that she "never said nothing". Phair may sound brash and strong when encountering rumours in the song, yet it shows at the time, women were the main subject of the rumours instead of men about hooking up with someone else (which perhaps still exists today), giving it a slight melancholic and bitter edge of the song, all in the while becoming one of the best track in the album.
Speaking of melancholy and bitterness, the following four tracks magnifies such feelings: "Soap Star Joe" laments about stardom starting from a small city, "Looking for action at a price he can pay/ They say he's famous, but no one can prove it/ Make him an offer just to see what he'll say") again contrasting the up-tempo guitars and percussions like "Help Me Mary"; "Explain It To Me" continues the trend of dark side of fame, yet this time is about living up with the expectations in the industry ("Tell him to jump higher/ Tell him to run farther/ Make him measure up/ Decades longer than you") and having your mind infected by fame ("Give 'em your medicine/ Fame injection"), things that Phair would later encountered and then fail to cope with it (Just look at the disappointing results of her follow-up, Whip-Smart); the haunting piano ballad "Canary" is perhaps one of a more horrifying and eerie theme of toxic relationships, written in a more disturbingly intimate and chilling way about the narrator being slave-like obedient to her lover ("I learn my name/ I write with a number two pencil/ I work up to my potential/ I earn my name/ I come when called/ I jump when you circle the cherry/ I sing like a good canary"), with Phair sings in the more somber version of "Glory"; "Mesmerizing" laments about a breakup set by the boyfriend, where he said things she wouldn't say straight to her face, "tossed the egg up" to her, letting her "found my hands in place", with Phair hoped that he could understand her more.
However, none of the tracks above could match the next track in terms of bitterness than "F--k and Run", where Phair laments the "boyfriend" she got only wants sexual pleasure ("You almost felt bad/ You said that I should call you up/ But I knew much better than that" and "I can feel it in my bones/ I'm gonna spend another year alone/ It's f--k and run, f--k and run/ Even when I was seventeen/ F--k and run, f--k and run/ Even when I was twelve") and sobs about wanting an actual boyfriend like "letters and sodas", clarifying the boundary between true lovers and client-and-staff-like relationships, makes you reflects what does true love mean.
Phair then switched to a more menacing territory again with "Girls! Girls! Girls!", where she earned, "You've been around enough to know/ That if I want to leave, you better let me go/ Because I take full advantage of every man I meet", telling him that she also got power to determine the fate of the relationship, and stated that she can get way with "what the girls called murder" everyday, hinted that she can end you if she is not happy with you; she then returned to the bitter territory with "The Divorce Song" without not being lacerating honest and menace, with Phair lamenting about having a fragile relationship ("And it's true that I stole your lighter/ And it's also true that I lost the map/ But when you said that I wasn't worth talking to/ I had to take your word on that/ But if you'd known how that would sound to me/ You would have taken it back"), with the jazzy guitar and the mid-tempo percussion, bitterness have never sounded so searing like this; the bitterness expands further in "Shatter", with her worrying about not being accepted the special man she wants("I know that I don't always realize/ How sleazy it is messing with these guys/ But something about just being with you/ Slapped me right in the face, nearly broke me in two/ It's a mark I've taken heart/ And I know I will carry it with me for a long, long time"), perfectly exhibiting the difficulties of women meet when finding a new relationship, despite its unnecessary long instrumentals.(It's the only track that is over five minutes long)
Then, Phair returns to the raunchiness of "Dance of Seven Veils" and expanded it to a new level in "Flowers", where the "devil" Phair (the lower-pitched vocals) frankly claimed want to f--k him like a dog, want to be his b-----b queen and f--k him 'til his d--k is blue, just to name a few desires she has in the song, while the "angel" Phair (the higher-pitched vocals) simply claims how she feels when she meets the guy, exhibiting the double-side of the women's sexual desire, becoming the most disturbingly memorable track in the album.
The closing tracks also made strong consistency in the album: Phair moans that "Johnny Sunshine" left her nothing while taking everything from her, from her car, horse to the life of her cat and her residency of her house, with Johnny took the latter by switching locks and lock her outside, lamenting the manipulation of a man on his girlfriend's property; Phair claims herself gunshy in (surprise, surprise) "Gunshy", lamenting how unsafe she from (I assumed) being abducted and rape and/or, worse, murdered; "Stratford-On-Guy" perhaps has the strangest themes, flying, as she "was flying into Chicago at night" and "watching the lake turn the sky into blue-green smoke", while claiming "the flight took an hour, maybe a day" and claimed once she "really listened", the noise just fell away, perhaps a metaphor for her upcoming career stardom.
There are a bit of a downside though."Strange Loop" is just your typical "I can't live without you" love song(The repeated "I always wanted you" suggested that), making it a rather disappointing closer for an album. Moreover, like I mentioned, it is rather simple, with Phair's vocals and production is rather flat, as I thought the emotion should be translated through vocals and great instrumentations.
But screw all those flaws, because that's the album it is: a perfect lo-fi indie-rock response to
The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. with off-kilter frankness about sex, frustrating misogyny and the sorrow life of being an adult, sealing the album as a codex of entering adulthood, especially for women. Years after the album released, many singers/songwriters would try to replicate the emotional rawness of Exile In Guyville, revealing their vulnerability, such as
Fiona Apple in her debut Tidal. Heck, there's even another codex of entering adulthood appeared in the 2010s pop music scene, namely Melodrama by
Lorde. They may not be directly influenced by Guyville, but this shows how can singer/songwriters can exhibit their emotions through their art, redefining how musicians create music and write music.
If I ever met Liz Phair in my life in person, I would try to argue with her that Exile In Guyville is no song-to-song response to Exile on Main Street, because in my opinion, Exile In Guyville IS the feminine, indie-rock version of Exile on Main Street.
Recommended Tracks:
6' 1"
Help Me Mary
Never Said
Soap Star Joe
Canary
F--k and Run
Divorce Song
Flower
Stratford-On-Guy
