Yesterday Liz Phair reissued Exile in Guyville, her storied 1993 debut, via Dave Matthews’ ATO imprint. The reissue is also remastered, tacks on a few odds-and-ends bonus tracks, and features a documentary-style DVD with Phair interviewing some of the types who populated/circulated around Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood at the time she was living there, partying there, and writing and playing the music that would become Guyville. Later this year ATO will also issue Phair’s first new material since Somebody’s Miracle, her disappointing 2005 effort for Columbia. To date, no one has stepped forward to claim that album as a miracle.

To celebrate the reissue and the album’s 15th birthday, Phair this week is performing the entirety of Exile in Guyville at a series of sold-out shows. After beginning in her adopted homeland of California, she moved to Chicago for a show last night at the Vic, and will hit New York City’s Hiro Ballroom tonight and tomorrow.

If the object(s) of her songs and the representatives of that 90s Wicker Park culture were in attendance at the Vic last night, they weren’t mingling in the room. The largely thirtysomething crowd around us relived their own memories of the album in a manner that fell somewhere between pedestrian and “Oh boy oh boy I know this one,” with whoops added for every time Liz mentioned cum, blow jobs, or fucking. Phair herself would often give a wry glower on those lines, as if she was trying to hard to deliver a punchline. A near constant stream of dudes — it’s always dudes — yelled out questions and requests. (Sidebar: those guys’ voices always sound exactly like the assholes who yell “Get in the hole!” right after Tiger Woods puts.) There was singing along to the rallying cries — “Fuck and Run” got a huge hand, “Johnny Sunshine,” “Help Me Mary,” and Phair did her best with the album’s more arch material, some of which she admitted had never before been played live. There were moments of pure open mic — “Wait, what are the chords again?” — and a few moments, too, of “Man, that song still owns.” But overall, it was a return to Chicago that felt forced, dated, and often blatant. “I don’t want to mess with my marketing plan,” Phair said from the stage, responding to some front-row banter. “Because it’s fucking sweet, and I thought of it.”

Marketing plan? Well, most of the crowd had probably put the finishing touches on a few PowerPoint presentations before arriving at The Vic, anyway. We left satisfied, but with the sense that Phair’s faltering career since Guyville has finally, fully overtaken the promise of her more visceral early material, reissue or not. — Johnny Loftus