Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney on EiG
Carrier Brownstein is now a commentator for the very un-Sleater-Kinney NPR. Here’s part of her look at Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville:
The first thing I noticed about Liz Phair was the voice. She wasn’t screaming, she wasn’t being cloying, she wasn’t an amazing singer, but there was something serious about the vocals, something deadly. Part of it was the flatness; the strange deadpan delivery, like someone is singing on their back, like they woke up one night and decided they’d had enough and so they made an album. But the songs weren’t victim anthems just like they weren’t merely come-ons; they spoke of the fine lines between power and powerlessness, autonomy and isolation, they depicted epiphanies and the subsequent letdowns. The album was a journey vacillating between interior and exterior landscapes, the lyrics evoking halcyon moments always on the verge of implosion, either by the author’s own hand or by someone they loved. And the album was drenched in desire, of wanting and of wanting out.
The revised at last LizPhair.com is not available yet, but the 15th anniversary reissue of EiG will apparently hit stores on June 24. It’s not in Amazon yet.
