In celebration of the 15th year anniversary of the groundbreaking album Exile in Guyville and its reissue by ATO Records, Liz Phair will perform the entire album at three engagements: August 27 at Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia; August 28 at 9:30 Club in Washington DC; and August 29 at The Paradise in Boston. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, July 23 via Ticketmaster.
These three additional shows come on the heels of four hugely successful sold out June events - two in New York City and one in each San Francisco and Chicago. Said Jon Pareles of The New York Times in his recent review of one of Phair's Exile in Guyville shows, "After 15 years of other people's indie-rock idiosyncrasies, "Exile" still holds up in all its conflicting impulses: its determination to be 'adamantly free' and its longing for someone to trust, its swagger and its pain." A modern classic, Pitchfork recently gave the album a 9.6 rating while both Rolling Stone and Blender gave Exile in Guyville a perfect score of five stars ("*****").
Exile in Guyville, which was out of print, is again available on CD, vinyl and - for the first time ever - in digital format. The special reissue package includes three never-before-released songs from the original recording sessions: "Ant in Alaska," with Phair simply accompanying herself on guitar, "Say You," which features Phair and a full band, and an untitled instrumental with Liz on guitar. Phair has also just completed a new, 80-minute DVD, "Guyville Redux," for the reissue.
In "Guyville Redux" - which features an introduction by Dave Matthews, founder/co-owner of ATO Records - Liz and the "guys" of Guyville take us back to the making of the album, the male-dominated, Chicago independent music scene of the early 1990's (which included Urge Overkill, Material Issue, and Smashing Pumpkins), and the Wicker Park neighborhood where it all happened. Phair interviews Gerard Cosloy and Chris Lombardi of Matador Records, which originally released the record, famed indie producer Steve Albini, Ira Glass of NPR's "This American Life," John Henderson of the elusive indie label Feel Good All Over, Brad Wood (producer of Exile In Guyville), John Cusack (who founded the Chicago avant-garde theater group New Crime Productions), Urge Overkill, and more.
Conceived as a song-by-song response to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, Exile in Guyville was released in 1993, and ranked #1 that year on both the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll and Spin magazine's year-end critics poll. Incredibly influential to this day, its place as a seminal rock album has been reaffirmed by its inclusion in countless historical "best of" lists over the past 15 years, including: "Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time," Spin's "100 Greatest Albums, 1985-2005," Rolling Stone's "Women in Rock (the 50 essential albums)," Blender's "Best Indie Rock Albums of All Time," Pitchfork's "Top 100 Albums of the 1990's," and VH1's "Greatest Albums Of All Time," to name but a few. Exile in Guyville is, in the words of Pitchfork, "a certifiable indie roadtrip classic."
Phair is currently working on new studio album for the fall. |
