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I’ve exiled myself to Liz Phair’s Guyville lots of times. But no trip thus far quite compares to the one last night, where at the Moore Theatre in Seattle the 56-year-old singer-songwriter celebrated the album’s 30th birthday by playing all 18 of its songs. The show — the sixth on an overall 23-stop tour — was like getting a high-def, deluxe version of an album I and I’m sure most of the audience have played so deeply into the ground that it was admittedly a little jarring at first to hear its songs be performed so loudly, their rock ‘n’ roll bonafides fully realized. (Phair looked the part of the rock star in a big-shouldered black turtleneck and leather shorts and boots.)

If scheduling this tour didn’t already indicate as much, Phair is acutely aware of Exile in Guyville‘s personal significance to its fans. (“I wish I could be inside all of your heads to see all your memories,” she said at one point.) I turned to it growing up as if Phair were a cool, older guide to life’s messiness, a status helped by a voice that was winsomely monotone and often suffused with what sounded like an eye roll but never in ways that meddled with her gifts as a singer-songwriter, oscillating easily from funniness to emotional vulnerability to admirably TMI in her basest desires.

Read the full review on 425.