Elliott Smith

The worst wrong you can do to Elliott Smith is to try to define him, to pigeonhole him. Elliott Smith the introverted artist, Elliott Smith the anti-star squirming in embarrassment in front of the Oscars crowd, Elliott Smith the sad singer-songwriter who took his own life: all of these are ill-fated attempts to give immediate, concrete shape to an art that was, if anything, exceedingly rarefied and mystical. A fistful of wind slipping through your fingers. Today as then, in memory as in life, Elliott and his music thrive on dichotomies: his lyrics overflow with melancholy, and yet they're multifaceted, alive, open to countless readings, with a final flourish that reignites the fuse of a resigned hope. His songs shield themselves behind a seemingly minimalist folk garb, beneath which churn a rare harmonic richness and vitality.

His shy gaze and timid bearing couldn't conceal the tumultuous inner workings of this fragile, cynical, romantic and disillusioned author, who in every composition opened himself up to the world through a poetic code entirely his own. Some tried to say he betrayed punk, others criticized him when he traded the acoustic guitar for piano-driven pop, failing to understand that Elliott Smith was always the same and always will be, even now that he's no longer with us, thanks to what stands as his legacy, the most precious and enchanting one he could have left us: his music.

In 1997, at twenty-eight, Elliott Smith had already recorded and released two solo albums for the indie label Kill Rock Stars, "Roman Candle" (1994) and "Elliott Smith" (1995): two poignant letters of raw pain, of plucked and soft neurasthenia. At the time, though, Elliott's folk career ran parallel to his work with Heatmiser, the punk band he founded in his late teens in Portland and with which he released three albums. The last of these, "Mic City Sons", came out in 1996 and already betrayed Elliott's unconditional love for pop music, for rounded, sinuous melody, the same love that surfaced increasingly often in his solo work. Needless to say, "Mic City Sons" had no follow-up, since just a few months after its release, Smith decided to leave Heatmiser to focus on his career as a singer-songwriter. And in those very writing sessions for what would turn out to be his band's final album, confirming how the role of punk frontman had already grown too tight for him, Elliott began composing the songs for the record unanimously regarded as his masterpiece, the essential and most iconic work in a career otherwise dotted with consistently strong output.

Released in February 1997, "Either / Or" isn't just his finest collection of songs — it's also the crossroads of Elliott's career, the point where his most despondent side met his boldest, where the bleak melancholy of his first two albums converged with the pop fascinations that would win him over in later years. Recorded across several home sessions between Portland and California, the album was produced by Tom Rothrock (who had already worked with Beck and Foo Fighters) and, in particular, by Rob Schnapf, who in the following years became Elliott's trusted collaborator as well as one of his dearest friends. Schnapf himself now speaks of the album as a "timeless" work, one that "beautifully and concisely captures the pain and loneliness that anyone, at any age, can feel". Aesthetically, the songs lean on spare, measured folk-rock arrangements, with fleeting pop polish smoothing out their rough edges here and there; but that polish never dulls the urgency, the emotional intensity, the evocative power radiating from these precious gems. A philosophy enthusiast, having studied the discipline at university, Elliott gave his album the same title as Søren Kierkegaard's "Either/Or", a text that examines the relationship between the aesthetic life and the ethical life.

People you’ve been before

That you don’t want around anymore

They push, shove and won’t bend to your will

I'll keep them still

Like every Elliott Smith album, "Either / Or" is a work centered on loneliness. Whether it stemmed from an existential condition or from a deep sense of estrangement from the world around him, desolation was, in his voice, sung with tragic tenderness, as if a fierce tenderness lay hidden within the folds of sadness. Though never explicitly addressed to one particular listener, these songs seem to speak directly to Elliott's own anxieties, as well as to his own addictions.

"The people you've been in the past / who you don't want around anymore / who push and shove and won't bend to your will / I'll keep them still": in "Between The Bars", the narrating voice — Elliott's? Alcohol's? A woman's? — invites surrender, urging you to dissolve every worry in a sensory haze. It's one of Smith's classic confessionals, candid and ambiguous, songs that whisper love and hope on the edge of a deep, pitch-black abyss. Like a tightrope walker mocked by onlookers, Elliott's fragile voice teeters on the edge of its own emotional balance, wounded at heart and disillusioned by its surroundings, yet uncorrupted, beautiful even when covered in scars.

The opening trio of songs sets the album's tone with a kind of listless pessimism. "Speed Trials" moves through soft crisscrossing acoustic guitars, marching through omens of disaster toward its resigned refrain, with its scornful contemplation of a static reality and humanity: "It's just a brief simile crossing your face / Running speed trials standing in place". Next comes a slow folk-rock stroll down the dusty paths of "Alameda" (a Portland neighborhood), which breaks the hermetic verses with a blunt warning: "Nobody broke your heart / You broke your own / 'Cause you can't finish what you start". A treatise on harmony of rare elegance closes on a harsh, cynical observation, more a stern self-rebuke than advice for the listener. A restrained anger, however deep-rooted and intense, then seeps out of "Ballad Of Big Nothing": again, dueling folk guitars open the track, leading into a pop song of exemplary melodic construction, culminating in its now-famous refrain ("You can do what you want to / whenever you want to / You can do what you want to / There's no one to stop you"). There's no authority beyond ourselves, but within our free and empty actions lies also our own fragility, our own imprisonment.

The already-mentioned "Between The Bars" is perhaps the album's most moving moment, a caressing, masterful piece of pop-folk, flawless in its melodic progression, devastating in its anguished words. The syncopated, skipping breath of "Pictures Of Me" seems to exhale from a song of irritation at prying eyes ("I'm so sick and tired of all these / pictures of me, totally wrong"), though Smith himself described it in an interview as a reflection "on the people you see on TV who do terrible things. Anyone — even you — can do good or bad things". In "No Name No. 5", the track closest to the folk austerity of his earliest work, the theme of loneliness surfaces plainly, wrapped in enveloping acoustic chords ("Got bitten fingernails and a head full of the past / And everybody's gone at last"). The walk down the "Rose Parade" ("an allegory that works for any pompous parade, for any ceremony of self-congratulation", as Elliott described the song) is carried by warm chords and tender vocal melodies, in counterpoint to the bleakness of the lyrics, before the reins are picked up by the evocative alt-country atmospheres of "Punch & Judy", still gripped by an ineradicable sense of inadequacy ("I think I'm gonna make the same mistake twice").

I can make you satisfied in everything you do

All your 'secret wishes' could right now becoming true

Be forever with my poison arms around you

No one’s gonna fool around with us

So glad to meet you,

Angeles

A siren echoes in the distance. City lights fading, windows in the night, headlights racing along the asphalt: a twilit, picturesque urban backdrop frames "Angeles", a rarefied, arpeggiated elegy on risk and temptation, arguably the imaginative peak of Smith's entire songbook. "Cupid's Tricks" and its nonsensical refrain wind into a dizzying, sing-song spiral, almost a momentary suspension ahead of the harrowing conclusion. And indeed, "2:45 A.M." arrives quietly, the frail whisper in the dead of night of someone lost, surrounded by darkness and now prey to paranoia ("I'm looking for the man that attacked me / While everybody was laughing at me").

Just when redemption seems impossible, a small flicker of optimism peeks through, like morning light slowly chasing away the darkness of night. "'Say Yes' was written for someone in particular, which almost never happens to me. I was really in love." Set to a sweet melody, closing out a painful and difficult record, Elliott Smith writes one of his most beautiful, unspoiled love songs, finding the strength to set out toward reconciliation, with himself and with the world.

I’m in love with the world

Through the eyes of a girl

Who’s still around the morning after

A leading figure of alternative Nineties music, Elliott nonetheless never identified with any particular scene. A reserved artist, he left behind the searing anguish of grunge to escape toward gentle, placid acoustic shores; rather than the lo-fi, naïve ethos of certain independent singer-songwriters of the era (see Smog and Daniel Johnston), he unashamedly preferred the bright, clean melodicism of the Beatles; he rejected the noise of the bands of that era, being hopelessly in love with the power-pop of Big Star. His pop leanings would eventually take full shape on his next album, "XO", richly arranged and well produced, released for the first time by a major label (DreamWorks Records). But his songs never lost an ounce of their honesty, their harmonic elegance, their melancholy poetry. All the leading indie songwriters to emerge in the years that followed, from Bright Eyes to Sufjan Stevens to Iron & Wine, could not have existed without his example.

After "Either / Or", Elliott Smith was truly someone. Averse to the spotlight, he quickly became a musician admired the world over, his name on everyone's lips; and his music, elusive to any easy definition, began to mean something real to countless people. Gus Van Sant was so captivated by his talent that he commissioned an original song from him ("Miss Misery") for what became one of that season's biggest Hollywood hits ("Good Will Hunting"). Elliott Smith, in a white tuxedo, visibly uneasy on the Oscars stage as he was called on to perform live, remains one of the most touching memories tying us to this uniquely gifted outsider.

On October 21, 2003 — exactly fifteen years ago — Elliott Smith took his own life with two stab wounds to the chest. Some said it was an inevitable ending, given the nature of his songs; others refused to come to terms with the idea of his death; and some, still convinced of it today, believe it was murder that cut his life short. But what unites all these conflicting voices and souls, different down to the smallest detail, remains that same shy singer-songwriter with the broken voice and introverted guitar, and his whisper that pierced straight through the heart.

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21/10/2018