Liz Phair's Girlysound To Finally See Official Release

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 2, 2010 3:40PM

It appears as if Liz Phair has found a way to move physical copies of her latest release, Funstyle, you know, that surprise release of hers that has drawn wildly conflicting but mostly negative reactions. She's announced that the CD version of Funstyle will come packaged with her original Girlysound demos, the now legendary lo-fi recordings that spawned most of the material on her earlier albums. You see, back when Phair was still under the impression that Urge Overkill was the coolest band in the world, a forgivable overestimation if you were in the local scene in the early '90s, she was also furiously recording her own music onto tape accompanied by nothing more than her guitar. While these recordings have been floating around for years, and are easily found online with a minimal search, this is the first time they will see an official release.

Details are sketchy at this point, only that Funstyle and Girlysound will come packaged as a double-disc set, leaving us with the question of just which Girlysound recordings will appear on the tracklist since they won't all fit on a single CD. And why is Phair finally releasing these recordings? Considering the negative reaction to Funstyle, Phair may be trying to put the new album in a new perspective and try to convince listeners that two are more similar in artistic voice than the naysayers can see. Of course the other viewpoint could simply be that Phair is trying to ensure the new album sells by forcing fans to by it if they want their own physical copy of Girlysound. Us? We think it's probably a combination of the two, though after hearing Funstyle the latter approach will probably do Phair more good than the former.