The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds.
Phair delivers the musical chops as well. Her remarkably facile voice sounds soft and biting one minute, soaring and regretful a few minutes later; she’s a hormonal rocker on one song, an abstract scatter the next. If she learned one thing from Exile, it’s that a good double album needs to include reach, ambition, surprises, and an overriding sense of a journey under way.
Later on, Wyman named it his top album of 1993, but he as he wrote in his end-of-the-year column, there had been considerable local backlash against Phair, Urge Overkill, and the Smashing Pumpkins, who had all risen to national stardom in 1993:
