All right, let’s get into it:
#7. From a Basement on the Hill
There’s great stuff here. But it’s also (bear with me) a huge mess. It’s sprawling in a way that doesn’t feel intentional, and yet there’s enough clear intention on display that it doesn’t seem like it should be so sprawling.
For example, I would put King’s Crossing near the top of the list of my favorite Elliott songs (if I were the type to make such lists), but in truth I’m not crazy about the actual recording. The multiple drum kits and background muttering and sound effects feel like overindulgence. I mean, overindulgence was the situation here, right? Given more time and a final mix that was made in conversation with the artist instead of Rob Schnapf doing his best with the multis, this could have been pulled into something much tighter and punchier. Maybe Elliott’s best work even.
But considered as a whole, not the sum of its parts, I don’t have a strong feeling about this record as a record, just a few songs that stick out to me: Don’t Come Down, Fond Farewell, and Coast to Coast among them. There’s an argument to be made here that posthumous albums in general can be a drag, at least when they’ve been “completed” by someone else. You can’t help but love the Arthur Russell recordings—but then they were basically untampered with. On the other hand, take the Sparklehorse release: a couple good songs, but everything about it feels confused, in the way that producers might get confused trying to work on someone’s abandoned art without any guidance. The end result is naturally a lot less focused. So anyway. Basement is worth checking out for the standout songs and from an archival perspective of course. But as a record I enjoy listening to? Well, it doesn’t really feel like a record and I don’t really enjoy listening to it.
#6. Figure 8
This one is the “cool” favorite to have at the moment. If this is your favorite, you must be a real fan. And I can see why—getting into these songs means peering past their relatively obscure lyrics. And enduring a dozen or so possibly overstuffed arrangements.
People really like Happiness—I have to tell you I am not crazy about that song; I don’t think it provides enough nuance to earn the note of sincerity it seems to be ending on, or in other words I don’t believe that Elliott truly has any interest in “happiness,” nor do I buy that it’s meant ironically. I’m not saying he’s a “sad sack” or whatever, I’m just pointing out that without the tragic context of his life, this song probably wouldn’t move you as much as it does, and to me that points to a failure in the song to win me over.
I do like Everything Means Nothing to Me, in fact it blew my mind when I heard it the first time. That is a song with some real harmonic thrust packed into about 30 seconds of a verse that feels both completely intuitive and completely insane—which goes with the meaning of the song. Here everything aligns into this duality where the chord changes threaten to escape completely the confines of reality or at least reality as it exists in Western harmony, and then resolve into that major ascending scale which, in context with the moment-to-moment modulations, sounds like the weirdest, most avant garde thing you could do—but doesn’t hit you over the head with it. Can’t Make a Sound also does some cool reality-bending major to minor stuff in its epic looping bridge of an ending. I also quite enjoy Joey Waronker’s fills in Son of Sam.
But I get exhausted by this album. Sure, it’s all great on paper, but the actual experience? Outside of EMNTM, I don’t get the sense that the writing is trying to do any heavy lifting. Songwriting can be a fragile and brittle thing: it’s a delicate business trying to pin down unnameable feelings with words and music, and if you push too hard you’ll lose the thing you liked. If you don’t try hard enough, however, you may never get past the initial stage of “oh that’s a cool idea” and into the part where, as in EMNTM everything aligns into this broader feeling and meaning.
I get the sense that on this album Elliott was checked out of that sort of writing. Part of that was probably (who knows) the whole drinking and drugging thing, and part of that was how well the drinking and drugging became such a useful metaphor to center his songs around. It was there before (Between the Bars), but there was still an attempt to reconcile the conflicting feelings and dualities of experience that made Elliott’s early songs so interesting. Here reconciliation seems beyond hope, and while that might be a more saleable tagline, it’s actually less interesting because there’s no longer any meaningful conflict. That, and the escapism via getting high that Elliott is writing about in nearly every lyrics set becomes an all-consuming vortex which snuffs out any of the ambiguity and double or triple meanings he had going at his best.
#5. Elliott Smith (S/T)
I don’t have a lot of feelings one way or the other about this record. It’s nice to put on. Christian Brothers is amazing of course, but the Heatmiser version is better. Obviously this is a personal issue, but the lack of much in the way of a rhythm section feel makes me overlook it for the most part, at least for what my ears are wanting to hear these days. I think as a younger person I might have gotten more out of this record, when I was more apt to soak in the mood of an album instead of thinking about stupid things like arrangements and lyrics.
#4. Roman Candle
There is something truly magical when you press play on Roman Candle. I think that kind of recording magic is (partially luck and also) the sign of someone who has put a hell of a lot of time into figuring out what you can and cannot pull off with a tape recorder. Elliott’s whole playing style, the brushy clawhammer-esque picking thing he does in my mind is entirely influenced by his recording process. I mean, can you imagine coming up with that as a way to play live? No one would be able to hear you in a loud bar if you started that way. So in that sense it’s a fairly modern invention; it only could have made sense in the 1990s and thereafter when Portastudios became available. The pocket in his playing to my ears derives from bossa nova, Irish music, and of course heavy metal (even at his softest, volume-wise, Elliott pulverizes every downbeat like it’s THE TRUTH). This album also has Condor Ave, which is maybe the best he ever did in terms of cooking something up that works with just guitar and vocals.
#3. Either/Or
Here’s where I stop being a hater and start being a fan.
Either/Or arrives at this perfect balance of highbrow music, low fidelity sound that you don’t hear very often. And to be fair to Rob and Tom it’s not very “lo fi” at all, if you dig into the recording details. I think this is the one Elliott album that makes me excited to make recordings whenever I listen to it. There’s a wide-open sense of possibility—I think part of what makes it special is that the people making it stopped short of arranging these songs to the nines. They didn’t add a string section, or mellotron overdubs, or all sorts of tempting things you might do to shine it up.
This leaves plenty of room for the imagination, and also sort of pulls back the curtain on what’s actually there: you can hear all the parts clearly, and the sounds have lots of assertive character (there’s a producer word for you). The snare drum on Alameda could accurately be described as “utterly terrible,” and yet it’s exactly right.
The songs are also some of his best: Pictures of Me is the one I come back to—I was stunned listening to it the first time and thinking, huh, someone else actually likes the Beatles?
Ballad of Big Nothing is maybe some of Elliott’s best writing: “You can do what you want to whenever you want to” is such an open-ended, powerful idea (it doesn’t work here out of context in print of course, but go listen to the song). Yes, the song makes reference to getting high, but here it’s in service to this broader meaning that, for me, has to do with freedom, and the paradox of having free will, and being alive in America, where nothing is truly free and everything has exchange value. It’s not the other way around, where a big idea like “true love” is used as a metaphor for drugs.
#2. XO
This is the Elliott Smith solo record I most often return to, and am most up for listening through all the way—which honestly I’m not sure I can say about any of his other ones, save for Either/Or on a good day. Sheesh, I sound like I don’t like his music at all—I do! I just find it exhausting in large doses. But XO is a real album’s album; it has a flow to it. It feels architectural, and has a bit of the Beatles-era McCartney “variety” thing going on, where the songs are kind of written in different styles.
I think the New York influence was good for Elliott: the music goes downtown, not just in that it has a saxophone (on A Question Mark), but the tempos in general feel more lively—Bled White and Amity in particular communicate authentically the constant motion of being in NYC. And I wouldn’t throw out a single song here—they’re all great. I think this album sounds the best, too: it’s big and oceanic, but not fatiguing. It’s the closest Elliott came to being the Beatles, and the clear adoration on display wins me over. Especially in his version of a song like Because (I Didn’t Understand), where he does the kind of a cappella arranging lots of songwriters wish they could even begin to attempt. I’ll say, if there’s any department where Elliott is head and shoulders above anybody, it’s voice leading. I think that’s what give his songs the sound of classic songs: they’re rooted in all this satisfying classical harmony, with a little guitar fretboard-influenced weirdness.
What else is on this? Baby Britain! Independence Day! Bottle Up and Explode. And Sweet Adeline, which I love to point out steals the rhythmic/chord change concept from Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing.” Pitseleh, like it or not, contains one of the all timer magical musical moments with that piano overdub. And Waltz #1 and #2 compete for the top of the tops where 3/4 time is concerned.
I was listening to Waltz #2 in the car some time last year and noticing how big the vocal sounds (is it a coincidence that the album I like most is the one with the least double-tracking?). Almost big enough to make me take out a loan to buy a Neumann U67 (just kidding, no one would ever lend me that much money). The only place where he almost loses me is Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands, which is the sort of proggy, sprawling thing that would get him in trouble in Figure 8 (in trouble, at least, with me). But the infinite descent in the outro is so glorious I’ll give it a pass.
#1: Mic City Sons
Yes, I’m serious. There are some misses in there, but at its best, for me at least, this is the greatest Elliott music. For all the architectural beauty of Elliott’s solo work, his songs with Heatmiser—once they quieted down a little and he started to find his voice—were unique and special, and I find myself most consistently returning to this Heatmiser album as a listener. For whatever reason. I guess a band is just always more vital.
Also, lest you think his songs are the only ones worth hearing, check out “Rest My Head Against The Wall”, which for my money nails the ‘soft yet gritty’ sound better than Elliott ever did on his own.
I swear I’m not just saying this to make a point about bands. I mean I am, but it’s not why I’m putting this at the top of my list. I’m putting it at the top of my list because it’s the one I still listen to most often, and that’s ultimately the only criteria that matters.
You Gotta Move feels like maybe the most timeless of Elliott’s songs. I know that’s a bit of an insane take. But everything about it is perfect, or maybe it’s the looseness of a band that makes it feel perfect. Heatmiser had as good a rhythm section as anyone: they were slippery and gluey and groovy and solid with sharp right-angled corners. Everything you’d want in this sort of band.
See You Later has all the makings of a huge hit and I’m not sure why it wasn’t. I think it’s a shame that the time and the place evidently wasn’t right for this music, commercially or interpersonally. Would I necessarily put the songwriting of something like Get Lucky above all the musical prowess on display on XO? No—but I still feel this album is more vital, and listenable. It feels more like a place you can visit. I think as the years go by there’s a chance the consensus will start to shift on this stuff from “Elliott-related curiosity” to “great record in its own right.”
Masterpiece? I would never use a word like that.
—
Okay, there you go.
Next week I’ll be back with some more new music.