Roman Candle’ is Elliott Smith debut album whereas he was still playing in Heatmiser at the time. The story related to the making of this album has been widely reported as a sort of an accident: Elliott had recorded the album in the basement of his girlfriend J.J. Gonson’s house, but did not have the intention to officially release it. However, J.J. Gonson played the self-recorded tape for her friends at Cavity Search Records and they became immediately interested to release it in 1994. In 2010, a remastered version of ‘Roman Candle’ by Larry Crane was re-released by Kill Rock Stars.
1. ‘Roman Candle’: The titled song is probably the most hurtful song of the album to listen to, because it is directly referring to his childhood abuse with lines like ‘I want to hurt him/I want to give him pain/I’m a roman candle/my head is full of flames’. The song is viscerally raw and the pain is palpable. There is almost one full minute of guitar strumming at the end, without no lyrics, an unusual thing for Elliott, may be a way to extend the emotion and to allow him to calm down after the terrible climax of the song.
‘I’m hallucinating’ tells everything about his reality, as if he did not want to completely believe what happened.
2. ‘Condor Ave’: In a 1996 concert, Elliott said he wrote this song when he was 17, but the lyrics may have changed several times over the years. It may be the most straightforward song he has ever written, with a full story, whereas his songs are usually about feelings, more about dream recalling than story telling.
2. ‘Condor Ave’: In a 1996 concert, Elliott said he wrote this song when he was 17, but the lyrics may have changed several times over the years. It may be the most straightforward song he has ever written, with a full story, whereas his songs are usually about feelings, more about dream recalling than story telling.
The song seems written in a series of flashbacks, like the ones someone can have after a terrible drama: they were fighting, she fled, she crashed the car and people got killed. The song may be a story but the use of metaphors is already there, with a lot of light imagery: the moon, the headlights, the cigarette, the fairground’s lit, the burning out, the light bulb, and the last time he mentions the Oldsmobile, it is driven past the moon, which could be a reference to death or heaven.
The line ‘They never get uptight when a moth gets crushed/Unless a light bulb really loved him very much’ is particularly striking as the metaphor of the moth and the light bulb could evoke some kind of self-abusing behavior, a fatal attraction, a terrible cycle that can only be stopped if the light bulb is capable of love.
He did not like to perform this song since he said once he could not remember all the words, but people kept asking for this heartbreaking story about miscommunication and the painful experience of losing someone before being able to do anything.
3. ‘No Name #1’: This song was co-written by Elliott and J.J. Gonson, and it is the number 1 of a series of songs he did not care to name because he did not know he would eventually release this album and perform the songs in public.
3. ‘No Name #1’: This song was co-written by Elliott and J.J. Gonson, and it is the number 1 of a series of songs he did not care to name because he did not know he would eventually release this album and perform the songs in public.
The song truly materializes isolation and alienation in the middle of a crowd ‘because you know you don’t belong’, some actually very non-cryptic lyrics for once. The melody is curiously upbeat, a dichotomy that will come back very often in his songwriting.
4. ‘No Name #2’: ‘She whispered quiet terror news’: secrets, untold stories that could ruin lives, seem to be behind the lyrics of this song. The story of abuse in the family makes these lyrics resonate with even more authenticity. There is a mystery in the song, and we never know what ‘she’ has to reveal over the phone, ‘Said do what you have to do/All she had to do was speak’, and I don’t think it would have brought something interesting to the song to know exactly what this terror news was all about. The song is made to build up mystery and mystery should be there. Also a rare use of harmonica in a song.
5. ‘No Name #3’: The song is built around a lot of sadness and alienation with a melancholic and recurrent guitar riff all along the melody. ‘So come on, night’ could be interpreted as welcoming the darkness to relieve his recurrent pain. And the line ‘Everyone is gone/Home to oblivion’ is probably an allusion to the Beckett’s novel ‘Watt’ and the meaningless of existence. It was also one of the song used in ‘Good will Hunting’.
6. ‘Drive All Over Town’: Pain is all over this album but certainly all over this song, which seems to be once again about his difficult childhood. And this time the melody fits the sadness of the lyrics. ‘The army captain’ is obviously addressed to his step father, who may have said to him ‘you were an accident’, whereas the ‘she’ in the song probably refers to his mother whom he is desperately looking for, ending driving ‘all over town’ to find her.
7. “No Name #4’: May be a failed attempt for his mother to leave his stepfather while taking a young Elliott with her. It’s is difficult to say if it is inspired by a true event or if it is just a fantasy, but the song says she decided to come back to this abusive relationship as it was the case in reality. The quietude of the melody contrasts so much with the terrible story line that develops throughout the song.
With the line ‘For a change she got out before he hurt her bad’, the song may remind another one Elliott wrote later: ‘You’re killing a southern belle’ (‘Southern Belle’).
8. ‘Last Call’: Bad memories haunt you forever, everywhere, and make your life a hell. Depression and despair transpire from the song and there is certainly a troubling meaning to the last line ‘I wanted her to tell me that she would never wake me’ since he may wish for more than a simple sleep. The ‘he’ and the ‘you’ in the song mix up and we are never sure whom he is talking about at times, but at the end Elliott is suddenly using ‘I’ as his anger is boiling up at its highest point.
Through a torrent of accusations, ‘You’re a crisis/You’re a icicle/You’re ongueless talker’, a lot of hatred and mad sickness is released as a liberating mantra, ‘Sick for your sound/Sick of you coming around/Trying to crawl under my skin’. The song turns around a lot of repetitive sentences, which add to the haunting and nauseous process with the help of a ascending loud sound.
9. ‘Kiwi Maddog 20/20’: The last track is an instrumental, with almost surfing guitars and the name of a cheap alcohol that comes in many fruity flavors as title. It has a light feeling may be to exorcise all the demons revived through the previous songs
Other tracks were recorded during the same sessions as ‘Roman Candle’, but did not figure on it.
• ‘No Confidence Man’: It is his first solo song and also the b-side of a 7” single split with Pete Krebs released on Slo-Mo Records in 1994. It is interesting to note that Elliott and Pete play instruments on both tracks. Out of print for quite some time, some rare copies surface sometimes and there are currently one collectible (signed by Pete Krebs) for sale on Ama
zon for $200 and one for sale on Ebay for $300!
• ‘No Confidence Man’: It is his first solo song and also the b-side of a 7” single split with Pete Krebs released on Slo-Mo Records in 1994. It is interesting to note that Elliott and Pete play instruments on both tracks. Out of print for quite some time, some rare copies surface sometimes and there are currently one collectible (signed by Pete Krebs) for sale on Ama
zon for $200 and one for sale on Ebay for $300!
The song is a sad and slow melody that leaves a lot of space for guitars with some harmonica at the end. Once again it seems to be directly addressed to his stepfather Charlie, who is even named in the lyrics. An angry frustration is fully present with absolutely no place for forgiveness, ’He gave me nothing but grief/And some bullshit story only I would believe’.
Elliott was still playing the song live, even late in his career, since he played it at one of his last concerts in 2003.
• ‘We’re All Friends Now’: According to Larry Crane, it was a song which was recorded in the fall of 1993, on the same four-track cassette than ‘Last Call’ and ‘Kiwi Maddog 20/20’. I never heard the song but according to someone it is a very different recording and would have sat oddly on Roman Candle. The lyrics seem to describe a tough scene in a bar.
It is strange how this album in a whole can be interpreted autobiographically although Elliott said he has never directly written songs about his personal life. Roman Candle as an album seems certainly an exception. Neil Gust said once Elliott would not have written so candidly about his childhood if he had thought his mother might ever hear it. It is probably true, and this is precisely what makes this album so authentically raw: the dsturbing experience to witness something we should not have.