Liz Phair - Exile In Guyville (1993 Remastered) (2018)

Allegedly conceived as a track-by-track response to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street — and told from the POV of a young woman in the early ’90s Chicago indie scene — Liz Phair's debut album has evolved into so much more. Starting from the puffed-up drag of "6'1" in which the 5'2" Phair baits, "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," the album is a rollercoaster of emotions: confusion and clarity, self-doubt and a visceral need to claim a place among men and make them take her seriously. She is willing to try on any number of personas to see what works: a player (the heartbreaker's murder ballad "Girls! Girls! Girls!"), a faux-naïf (the laidback "Never Said Nothing", featuring Casey Rice’s clarion-bell guitar), smirking arm candy (the Spaghetti-western pop of "Soap Star Joe") or a caged animal ("Mesmerizing", the most Stones-y song here). There’s some pure alchemy at work, because on paper the formula doesn’t always make sense. The stripped-bare dream pop of "Explain It To Me" is pretty much just one single riff played over and over and over, while Phair’s disaffected voice sings some other melody, and the result is magical. And the excellent "Fuck and Run" — with drums that sound like they’re made of cardboard and Phair sheepishly shrugging off a one-night stand — sounds as alive, raw and vital as it did when it was brand new. Upon the album’s 1993 release, much was made of the sex talk: poetic on songs like the good-girl hymn "Canary" ("I jump when you circle the cherry") and brash on the hypnotic, almost chant-like "Flower" ("I want to fuck you like a dog"). For the fact that such feminine horndoggery is hardly shock value now, Phair deserves more credit than Madonna.