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Following a decade of stagnation and waning interest, legendary singer-songwriter Warren Zevon , who masked his soft-side with his sarcastic, lyrical prose, entered the new millennium with his acclaimed 10th studio album Life'll Kill Ya. Though the album predated Zevon's fatal cancer diagnosis by two years, its title track, as well as standout cuts like "My Shit's Fucked Up" and "Don't Let Us Get Sick," brought the album critical praise as a "mournful lament on the aging process and the inevitable decay that accompanies it." Available now for the first time on vinyl, and limited to 1000 copies, Ship To Shore PhonoCo's 20th anniversary reissue of Life'll Kill Ya features brand-new, expanded liner notes and rare photos from Jorge Calderón, Zevon's son, Jordan, and Dawes' Taylor Goldsmith. Other highlights include "Porcelain Monkey," which puts Elvis Presley in Zevon's sardonic crosshairs, a cover of Steve Winwood's "Back In The High Life Again" sounds as if it were written for Zevon, and "Fistful of Rain" is a melodious examination of the fickle nature of fame. Engineered as a comeback vehicle, co-produced by Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade (the producing duo responsible for Radiohead's Pablo Honey), Zevon's songwriting collaborator Jorge Calderón added a lighthearted accent to Zevon's musical portraits of doom and gloom. Despite helping with a successful comeback, Life'll Kill Ya's content was revealed all too true when, in 2003, Zevon passed away of pleural mesothelioma. "I mean, the fact that life will kill you is just that," Zevon told Rolling Stone in upon the album's release. "I think you have to spend a fair amount of time realizing that you will be, so that you'll remember to enjoy everything you possibly can every minute you're not. You always want to try and tell younger people that, which is very difficult, because they don't really hear it because they feel a life has been imposed on them. And of course, they're absolutely correct."

Track Listing

Bonus Materials

• Expanded liner notes featuring never-before-seen photos from Jorge Calderón and Jordan Zevon

Sales Points

• Expanded liner notes featuring never-before-seen photos
• Limited to 1000 copies
• First ever vinyl re-issue

Press Quotes

[A] bleakly witty but unblinking glimpses into the abyss of mortality.

     —Mark Deming, https://www.allmusic.com/album/lifell-kill-ya-mw00

[Zevon] becomes the object of his own wicked fascination. By turning inward, he managed to go out on top.

     —Stephen Deusner, https://www.stereogum.com/2069747/warren-zevon-lif

I love this guy. One of the great singer-songwriters of rock and roll.

     —David Letterman, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NyMfZnkLpk&featur

Zevon tackles degenerating health, degenerating (and degenerate) relationships, and the degeneration of Elvis, with only a liberal dose of dark humor.

     —Richard Skanse, https://richardskanse.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/war

These songs do seem to go over pretty well, to get people's attention. It seems to me the last couple of tours they've been listening to these songs... maybe its because they're intense or they're moving, but they seem to be listening.

     —Warren Zevon, https://richardskanse.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/war

It's Zevon's charm to match his grim attitude to some of the prettiest tunes around. The prettiness stresses the sincerity of his work - but the rough lyrics ensure that it doesn't go too far.

     —Jim Farber, https://www.nydailynews.com/zevon-demons-songs-dar

Humor and brutal, poignant honesty had always been hallmarks of Zevon's oeuvre, and both of those qualities were in full effect on Life'll Kill Ya

     —Jeff Giles, https://ultimateclassicrock.com/warren-zevon-lifel

Life'll Kill Ya features a Zevon fully in command of the gifts evident in his classic '70s work, most notably a sardonic sense of humor tempered by a melancholy sense of humanity.

     —Keith Phillips, https://music.avclub.com/warren-zevon-lifell-kill-

With Life'll Kill Ya, Zevon seems to acknowledge that he works best satisfying himself, and he does so by assembling 12 thoughtful, often caustically funny, always intimately felt songs.

     —https://www.nodepression.com/album-reviews/warren-

There is something redemptive about Zevon's grumpy, mordant view of the world. He may not be able to hit the high notes, but his songs are clever, burnished gems. Besides, you can't deny the truth of the title song.

     —People Staff, https://people.com/archive/picks-and-pans-review-l

This was the release where Zevon seemingly decided that he had tired of being a difficult to handle outsider and had instead realised that he'd be much happier as a wry and knowing elder-statesman singer-songwriter.

     —John Bryan, https://www.backseatmafia.com/not-forgotten-warren

Elegantly played music and eloquently sung lyrics are the hallmarks of this no-risk disc.

     —Dan Aquilante, https://nypost.com/2000/01/25/zevon-is-dead-on-wit

Life'll Kill Ya sounds like a classic comeback record, in which Zevon chucks the El Lay overproduction that suffocated most of his work from the past 15 years, focuses on his acerbic storytelling and comes up with a winner.

     —Michael Barclay, http://exclaim.ca/music/article/warren_zevon-lifel

...resonates with the quizzical poignancy of midlife survival while still harkening his delectably deranged 'Excitable Boy' heyday.

     —Beth Johnson, https://ew.com/article/2000/01/24/lifell-kill-ya/