But Liz Phair made sense to me because she was mad and sarcastic and funny, and one of the few things I knew about adulthood was that anger and sarcasm and humor were all a big part of it. I was 10 years old when Exile in Guyville came out, so nowhere near ready for blow-job lyrics. Idful Music, Chicago, 1992 Courtesy Brad Wood and Matador Records The other day, my wife and I played вЂњ Divorce SongвЂќ in the car and sang every word while the children slept in the back seat. The whole thing was essential, part of my education, some kind of holy text. I would see her live that next year, enroll in Feminist Studies 101, put deep cuts-вЂњMesmerizing,вЂќ вЂњStratford-on-GuyвЂќ-on mixtapes I gave to girls I liked, but really I didnвЂ™t even have favorite songs. Except this wasnвЂ™t a crush on a girl with a guitar it was the songs, those lyrics about male entitlement, female vulnerability, lust, and love that got in my head, under my skin, explained the world to me in some critical way. She played her Fender low on her tiny frame and you could just see her left nipple on the cover.

What does it mean for a straight 19-year-old American male to fall in love with Exile in Guyville? Maybe nothing-maybe simple chemistry. I was just home from college that June, and I bought it at my local record store, Plan 9, in Richmond, Virginia-because I wanted everything on Matador Records, because IвЂ™d read something about her in Spin. Phair didnвЂ™t just want to make a response to the Stones, she wanted to make an album that stood up to theirs. The album is often described as a song-by-song rebuttal to the Rolling StonesвЂ™s Exile on Main Street, but thatвЂ™s only part of the story. The Chicago neighborhood where she lived and worked вЂњwas a very uniquely male environment, and that sort of shut me down, and made me feel quiet and small and frustrated and slightly afraid.вЂќ Yes, Liz Phair-whose delicately anthemic album was a raw rejection of female powerlessness-felt afraid!Д«ut it would be a mistake to qualify Exile in Guyville as anything other than audacious. The goose is cooked.ItвЂ™s something of a clichГ© to say that some great work of art вЂњalmost didnвЂ™t happen.вЂќ But hold on to your Whitechocolatespaceeggs, Exile in Guyville almost didnвЂ™t happen! It wasnвЂ™t just that Liz Phair once considered herself more of a visual artist than a musical one, having, as she put it, вЂњvery little ambition musically.вЂќ It was that even the production of the album was a kind of battle through her own personal Guyville: вЂњIt just felt like I was hemmed in by all of these rock вЂ™nвЂ™ roll types that were just beasts,вЂќ Phair says in an oral history that accompanies the release of a new 25th-anniversary box set of the album. I hate that IвЂ™m invested enough to keep checking in, fingers crossed, waiting. WhatвЂ™s the fucking point? This is slow-death tragedy. Which is why this review is barely even doing that. Many of these songs feel like theyвЂ™d play in the background of an episode of Friends вЂ“ and not a reboot I mean those cringey old episodes that were first recorded around the time The Real Liz Phair was making real music to really dig. Just a touch.ДЄnd thereвЂ™s absolutely nothing here worth hearing. Because it welcomes back the producer from those first two records (Brad Wood) вЂ“ so you get your hopes up. Well, this new album might be the very nadir. Weird attempts at being a pop singer without ever fully committing, without any real hooks to the songs and with the most pedestrian arrangements. But nah, really it was those first two.ДЄnd since then weвЂ™ve just had banal rubbish. And it flowed on over to the next record вЂ“ and I used to be very charitable and say the one after that was okay too. Blaze a trail with the debut, you might never have asked to be a pioneer but the spirit and spit and snarl of those songs from a quarter-century ago felt like a real fuck-you to a boys club. One of the saddest things in the universe of music вЂ“ to me, at least вЂ“ is looking at Liz PhairвЂ™s discography as the ultimate case study for diminishing returns.

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