Girly sound
TRAILBLAZING SINGER-SONGWRITER LIZ PHAIR REVISITS HER SEMINAL ALBUM AND DISCUSSES HER NEXT ALBUM AND MEMOIR
When Liz Phair speaks, she’s so warm that it feels like you’ve known her forever. Her energy is palpable: the 50-yearold singer-songwriter is on the cusp of re-releasing her seminal breakout album Exile in Guyville along with the music that she made before breaking big under the moniker Girly Sound. Twenty-ive years ago, Exile in Guyville was a groundbreaking, starkly raw depiction of the inner workings of women. In serving as a response to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St, Phair’s record addressed the core of a male-dominated world through lyrics about the music industry, intimacy, anger and relationships in a way that hadn’t been done before.
On the 25th anniversary of Exile in Guyville, we talked to Phair about how the album disrupted the music scene, her forthcoming record with Ryan Adams and her memoir Horror Stories.
It’s been a while since you did interviews around Exile in Guyville.
Can you tell me about how long you’ve been planning this anniversary tour and record re-release?
I guess for two years really. We started talking about it when I was on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins. I met with Matador when we were
in New York. We had a big table meeting and I was like, “How are we
going to ind the [Girly Sound] tapes because I don’t have them?” We had to go through a couple of points where [we]
were like, “Are we going to be able to get all these tapes complete?”
There was one tape no one had and one that no one remembered what was on it. Then it started to come together. Once we knew that we had the physical music, knowing that every song could be heard and could be mastered, then it started to take off. But it was nail-biting for a while.
Back in the day, Exile in Guyville was a divisive record for women in music and the way you frankly sang about intimacy. How do you think it would be perceived if it came out in 2018?
That’s an interesting question. I doubt it would make such an impact because we’ve seen women saying things like that. I don’t think it would stick out quite as much as it did back then. I think there’s a lot of work from women that runs the gamut. It was just a feature of how few women were really working in the business back then. Thirty years ago, that’s not what people expected women to say.
If I was going to say that stuff, I ought to have tons of piercings and be really p ***** off. It was like your neighbour: the girl next door who you wave to on the school bus broke out with this inner life that was turbulent and simmering with resentment and loneliness. It was like seeing the girl next door go nuclear.
Last year it came out that you were making a double album with Ryan Adams. Where does that stand now?
We changed it from a double album. It was an idea that was there before Trump got elected. As an artist, you’re always putting something out about how you feel right now and what is inspiring to you. But we all fell into a massive depression. Our concepts fell apart — it just didn’t have the gravitas that we wanted. Ryan toured and did some other stuff. It took a while. Now we’re just about to inish it and
it’s a totally different record. What was the original concept that you scrapped?
We were gonna do the White Album, but the Trumpocracy came and overtook us and it wasn’t fun or funny anymore. We had to regroup with a different angle. Later on we can release that material in a different way at a different time, but we needed to put something out that felt more authentic to how we’re feeling.
Your next big thing is putting out your memoir. How did you become interested in going into literature?
I actually didn’t want to write a memoir, I wanted to write fiction or prose. What happened to me after Trump got elected and the blowback we thought we were collectively on board with — I got in touch with this outrage and horror. I wanted to redirect my own attention and put something out in the world that redirected attention towards the interpersonal responsibility and the emotional ways in which we bump up against each other.
I wanted to slow everything down and look at what matters between human beings and how we became to be the people we are. I wanted to examine those scars and ind the beauty within that.
You look at Trump and those people and you think, if you connected to yourself and the people around you, you wouldn’t behave this way. As a culture, I wanted to add my weight to a pile of people who stop and see the beauty of when two people are compassionate to each other. The stories from my life, career and childhood, but they’re not all chronological. It’s about humanity, beauty and horror.