While we're on the subject, we can celebrate the 15th anniversary reissue of Liz Phair's 1993 debut album Exile in Guyville, which is available in stores and on iTunes now. This record is famously an answer record to The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street (1972), and probably more infamously, one that managed to both excite and discomfort people with its frankly sexual (and gender-flipped) lyrics and flat, dispassionate vocals by Phair. I think many men felt somewhat castrated by her, but figured if anyone had to do the castrating, why not a hot chick like Liz Phair? Click here to watch a video (produced by Liz herself) of famous 90's relics fondly recalling Exile in Guyville.
My favorite song off of this album is not one the more notorious songs like "Flower" or "F**k and Run" (this is a family blog) but one of the last songs on the second side of the tape, "Stratford-on-Guy." I always enjoyed the much darker atmosphere created on this song than on the other songs on Exile. Her vocals seem strongest on this track, and the momentum is built up slowly but steadily during the verse, erupting into scathing emotion in the chorus. The accompanying video for Stratford-on-Guy also effectively plugs into the night driving quality that this song holds for me.
Her lyrics were good. Check it out:
I was flying into Chicago at night
Watching the lake turn the sky into blue-green smoke
The sun was setting to the left of the plane
And the cabin was filled with an unearthly glow
In 27-D I was behind the wing
Watching landscape roll out
Like credits on a screen
The earth looked like it was lit from within
Like a poorly assembled electrical ball as we moved
Out of the farmlands into the grid
The plan of the city was all that you saw
And all of these people sitting totally still
As the ground raced beneath them thirty thousand feet down
It took an hour, maybe a day
But once I really listened, the noise
Just went away
Liz Phair - "Stratford-on-Guy" (1993)
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