Girly sound to Guyville

"Best New Reissue" - "Liz Phair's indelible, essential debut album has been reissued with three crucial bedroom tapes that further define the innovative and unselfconscious songwriting from early in her career".

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"Girly-Sound - the name of a series of three cassettes Liz Phair released after graduating from Oberlin in 1990 - is essential to Phair's legacy, the music that led her to her 1993 breakthrough, Exile in Guyville. Despite its centrality, the songs were doled out slowly, either re-recorded for Exile or its sequels, Whip-Smart and Whitechocolatespaceegg, or appearing as B-sides or bonus tracks as late as the 15th Anniversary reissue of her debut in 2008. All of this makes Girly-Sound to Guyville - ostensibly the deluxe 25th Anniversary reissue of Exile in Guyville - such a noteworthy release".

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"Decades down the road from Exile in Guyville's initial rapturous critical reception, the list of men who claim (or have been assigned) linchpin status in Phair's artistic development has only grown; the sundry oral histories of the album are packed with men, elbowing forward to claim "it was I" - who loaned her that guitar, or booked her on that bill, or noticed a potential she, naturally, wasn't even sure of herself. This box set deadens those dubious claims, underscoring what we already knew: It was all her, all along. Its gift is letting us hear a great artist become forged, and become herself, song by song".

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