Elliott Smith

92
Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith

Lo-fi, folk punk, and other mid-‘90s buzzwords didn’t help the ferociously talented Smith when he debuted with 1994’s Roman Candle to a public already softened up for the charms of post-grunge acoustics. Perhaps the album fell through the cracks because of the limited resources of its tiny label, or maybe because so much of Roman Candle sounds like Simon and Garfunkel after an idealism bypass. The album set the Smith template: unflinching portraits of bad love in a low-down town, recorded with sparkling clarity, his guitar squeaky, his voice unemphatic to say the least, the rolling prom rhythms hypnotic and terribly, unrelentingly sad. If total lack of effect is going to be your thing, you’d better know something about song-craft. Fortunately for Elliott Smith, he’s not just depressed, angry, and sarcastic, he’s also observant, literate, and musically accomplished. Never has “folk punk” been as classically defined as in Smith’s second album, 1995’s self-titled, his first premiere effort for the indie anti-corporate rock label Kill Rock Stars. He spins disorienting acoustic web of strums and plucks on guitar; his voice has all the substantially of wet tissue paper. But the music burrows, digging up gems of structure, melody, and lyrical vividness that belie his naïve delivery. He tries to distance himself from the tales of misery, shifting from second to first person as his characters- “I,” “you”- get thrown out of bars, hunt down a fix buzz-brained, and fumble their love lives. On the page, it’s literary punk rock, all fury at the Man (in “Christian Brothers”) and wear poems of self-examination in a substance-altered state. But the sound of hummable pop, slowed and drugged, with tricky but unshowy guitar work driving the melodies forward, and sung in a numb whisper. “The Biggest Lie,” “St. Ides. Heaven,” and especially the stunning look into the head of a middle-class addict, “Needle inthe Hay,” are some of the loveliest songs about the dissolution of the souls ever written. Smith is so discouragingly self-aware that he’s the first person to realize that a move to Hollywood might corrupt his defiant outsider stance. So it’s no surprise, only a bit of a disappointment, that when he not only contributed a song to a big-budget movie but he got an Oscar nomination for it (“Miss Misery” written for Good Will Hunting) and then moved to the West Coast, he would make the kind of album that complained about how fake Tinseltown is. Nor is it coincidental that he uses variations of the phrase “Please to meet you,” to evoke the false bonhomie of SoCal business, since the last great post-punk album about the soul-draining pleasures of Hollywood was the Replacements’ Pleased to Meet Me. Smith didn’t mislay his talent for his masterpiece, 1997’s Either/Or, just his perspective. His use of a full band sounds rich and real- “Alameda” is a beautiful Beatlesque march, “Ballad of Big Nothing”is such pitch-perfect folk pop it’s a shock the Mamas and the Papas didn’t think of it first, and “Say Yes” indicated he might be ready to crawl out of his navel and look at the real world more with rose-colored glasses and less of a jaundices eye. But moaning about the absurdity of seeing “Pictures of Me” all over town or shaking his head over the big mess,. “Rose Parade” is just juvenile. It’s more frustrating when his best and worst impulses collide, as on the gorgeous finger-picked “Angeles” another slap at sunlit phoniness painted with exhilarating delicacy: “Someone’s always coming around here trailing some new kill/ Says I seen you picture on a hundred-dollar bill, And what’s a game of chance to you, to him is one for real skill.” Smith could hang on like Tom Wait if he’d learn to appreciate the glitz as much as he revels in the grime. Was Smith’s fear of an industrial buyout a fulfilling prophecy? 1998 found Elliott on the major labels, releasing XO on DreamWorks Records. Some may argue that the widescreen instrumentation wasn’t as beautiful as the recordings he made with just him, a 4-track tape recorder, and a guitar in a basement on a hill underneath some stairs, but those people probably never listened to “Independence Day.” Horns, brass, and strings bring these songs to the fore-front. “Amity” benefits from a crashing, textural wall of cymbals. 2000’s Figure 8 is the exhilarating peak of Elliott’s recording career. Smith capitalized on gorgeous melodies and inherently joyous music, music that stemmed from anger, addiction, and madness. In small doses, Elliott uses guitars, drums (which he played himself! [I'm a big fan of his drumming style]), bass, piano, and backup vocals to give his songs a shimmering chime, Beatlesque march, and intimate folk strum… all in one. Elliott committed suicide in 2003 while working on a followup, the uneven but often lovely From a Basement on the Hill, a nod to where it all began, bringing full circularity to Elliott’s life as a solo artist. I could talk about his band Heatmiser, but that’s not a band I ever got into like I did with Elliott’s solo work. 2007 saw the release of the amazing compilation New Moon, which brought all the rarities together on 2-discs, including his amazing cover, and dare I say better, version of Big Star's "Thirteen." Elliott is kinda’ like the 2Pac of the indie world, because every  now and then a new song will pop up, whether it his fun rendition of Hank Williams Jr.'s "All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)" or the countless other songs he covered live. There's also quality studio work still being released: My favorite song is one that was released after his death, “The Real Estate.” His treasure cove is endless. The bootleg fan curated (unofficial bootleg & 2012 released) Grand Mal: Studio Rarities captures it all. For the newbies- Elliott has a greatest hits, the 2010 released An Introduction To...” He is sorrowfully missed, but with any great musician, we have the music to go to whenever we need it. And I find myself needing Elliott a lot throughout this crazy thing we call life. That ain’t no diss…

It's…

Elliott Smith