There is a new Elliott smith compilation out, which had been announced since last August, and this is the third posthumous release after ‘From a Basement on the Hill’ and ‘New Moon’. I have already commented on several of the songs that are featured on this new album ‘An introduction to… Elliott Smith’, since they come from his first album Roman Candle’ (‘Last call’), his self titled album (‘The biggest lie’, ‘Needle in the Hay’) or from his album ‘Either/Or” (Ballad of Big Nothing’, ‘Pictures of me’, ‘Alameda’, ‘Between the Bars’, ‘Angeles’).
You can actually stream the whole album on spinner.com:
Since it seems that Elliott is mentioned everywhere right now, it may be time for another part of the review of his whole catalogue. Even though the ‘XO’ period is only represented by one song on this last compilation, this 1998 album was his big breakthrough as it was his first work on a major label, DreamWorks.
Two singles from XO were released too, ‘Waltz #2 (XO)’ and ‘Baby Britain’, and an early working title for the album was ‘Grand Mal’.
‘Sweet Adeline’: The opening track of the XO album, which has the name of his grandmother’s singing club, starts with a quiet melody and a strange progression, and then explodes in a layered multitude of ‘Sweet Adeline/My Clementine’… like a outburst of restrained emotions. Like in many songs of this album, there is a desired to get sedated, disconnected from the world, there is a wish to erase the past (‘Cut this picture into you and me/ Burn it backwards, kill this history’).
‘Tomorrow Tomorrow’: The song sounds first like a fragile melody which grows and grows mostly because of the layered ethereal vocals, Elliott harmonizing with Elliott, and which culminates in a powerful ‘Then tomorrow, tomorrow’. The word association ‘deaf and dumb and done” is curiously repeated in ‘Sweet Adeline’ and in ‘Tomorrow Tomorrow’, which leads to the same atmosphere of alienation. The whole song seems to be like a struggle, between a parasitic static noise in his head and his desire to drown it out.
‘Waltz #2 (XO)’: Probably one of his most well-known and most loved song, piano and drums driven, with a melancholic melody and Elliott’s trouble relationship with his mother and his step father at the center of the story happening in a karaoke bar, bringing references to other songs about beaten women, ‘Cathy’s Clown’ and ‘You’re No Good’. There is all the restrained anger and the contained frustration that explode with the killer declaration that has become some sort of epitaph for many people: ‘I’m never going to know you now/But I’m gonna love you anyhow’
‘Baby Britain’: A Beatles-que melody line over a sea of vodka, an ocean of metaphors about alcoholism and may be a break-up with a girl over a background of 60’s musical references (‘Revolver’ and ‘Crimson and Clover’).
‘Pitseleh’: A song that Elliott was reluctant to play live, because it was ‘long and boring’ or something of this sort. ‘Pitseleh’ being ‘little one’ in Yiddish, the sad and slow song certainly goes into childhood territory, leading to the terrible admittance of being disappointed with yourself (‘I’m not half what I wish I was’). The song works like a confession whispered into your ears, disclosing a hopelessness about any future love relationship
‘Independence Day’: One of the most hopeful song on the album with its promise of independence and metaphoric delivery. The guitar riff escapes from the liberating and delicate melody like the butterfly of the song, and if the line ‘You only live a day/but it’s brilliant anyway’ has turned into a sad prophecy, it should not be seen that way.
‘Bled White’: A happy and determined tone for a song that functions with two voices, one sung high and bright, the other one sung low and burnt out. Rose, white and yellow, the colors are all over it and Elliott, as this color reporter, is ready to go to any extremity to restore the brightness to the bled white city (which may be Portland): ‘Because I’ll have to be high to drag the sunset down/And paint this paling town’.
‘Waltz #1’: The running and fluid piano notes mixed with the high-pitched vocals give an ethereal sound to the song, contrasting with the heavy atmosphere perceptive by the hurtful lyrics. A loads of regrets over a failed relationship, doomed from the beginning, which ends up with the cruel line: ‘I wish I’d never seen your face’
‘Amity’: A fast song with its outburst of electric guitars, named after an ex-girlfriend, and written in a couple of minutes according to an interview. The song was more about expressing a feeling by the way the words sounded, like a fast relationship burnt away quickly, than anything deeply meaningful.
‘Oh Well, Okay’: A slow and quiet song, beyond melancholic, about pictures disappearing ‘The bleeding color gone to black, dying like a day’, revealing a total despair, leaving only helplessness in your mind ‘I got pictures, I just don’t see it anymore,’
‘Bottle Up and Explode!’: The song works as a big relief, after repressed and frustrated anger, as if Elliott was letting his nature go (‘The thing Mother Nature provides to get up and go’) at last. The music, just like the lyrics, translate this liberation and fireworks in the head, ‘Seeing the stars surrounding you/Red, white and blue’, as if the weirdly subtle patriotic theme already there in ‘Independence day’ was resurrected, a drunk triumph ending up in an outburst of emotions.
‘A Question Mark’: It is difficult to say if it is an angry song (You’re giving back a little hatred now to the world/Because it treated you bad) or a disillusioned one. Failed relationships are described all over the album but in particular in this song with this glimpse of false hope, ‘If you ever want to say you’re sorry you can give me a call’, trans
lating this desperate feeling about never really wanting to give up.
lating this desperate feeling about never really wanting to give up.
‘Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands’: This is a song which is supposed to have been written about his time in a rehab clinic in Arizona (explaining lines like ‘looking at the brilliant sun’), where he was sent against his will. The subjacent anger communicated through the song is bitter and cruel, Elliott rejecting the supposed affection from others, that ‘chemical embrace that kicks you in the head’, or this ‘pure synthetic sympathy that infuriates you totally’. It is a leave-me-alone-fuck-you song, a rejection of the false compassion he is used to receive and a refusal to conform to other ‘s idea of him, this ‘pretty vision in your head’.
‘I Didn’t Understand’: This beautiful a cappella song closes the album, Elliott’s voice layering Elliott’s voice like an infinite echo with regrets and, once again, an extreme melancholy, but also a self-hatred and a worthlessness pushed to its extreme: ‘There’s nothing here that you’ll miss/I can guarantee you this/Is a cloud of smoke/Trying to occupy space/What a fucking joke’. Love becomes a place called ‘Never-Never Land’ and hope is gone forever.
These other songs probably are from this same period and only one was featured on the posthumous album ‘New Moon’, whereas the other ones are unreleased at the exception of ‘Miss Misery’. Although Elliott recorded numerous songs during the XO sessions that did not make it to the album, it is sometimes difficult to know exactly when each of these songs were written and/or recorded. Some of the following songs may also have figured in the Either/or period.
‘All cleaned out’: This bright folk tune was probably written about his mother’s relationship with his stepfather, and lines like ‘I saw you with your make-up running down’ or ‘about 5 o’clock here comes your clown, or ‘and I’m sorry you think you have to hold your tongue’ evoke troubles and a lot of unsaid in the family. The song was released on ‘New Moon’
‘A silver chain’: I have only heard rough recordings of this song, which was once only an instrumental with a keyboard driven melody, slowly moving and evoking once again the Beatles’ most delicate tunes. It is interesting to imagine what this unreleased song about a fetish silver chain that ‘won’t protect him from pain’ could have become.
‘Cecilia/Amanda’: This unreleased song works by ascending half joyous-half anxious waves, which calm down into a gentle guitar riff, before re-surging with force. Like many of the songs of this period it seems to be about troubled families, although this one does not seem to be as personal as usual, but rather talks about the life of a prostitute? A strange song since Elliott’s songs are never this precise and narrative.
‘Division Day’: This drum driven song, which was released on a single with ‘No Name #6’, has an infectious nervous rhythm and a insistent keyboard note overwhelmed by the melody of the bright instrumental chorus. Division day, Independence day, there is some expectation of something about to happen, a feeling of liberation all over the song. If some people will see in it some message related to suicidal thought, probably because of lines like ‘The moon stood up on the ridge/Looking down where the water shines/And a man looking over the bridge/Like he done so many times’, the upbeat melody could in fact relate to any day of liberation and rebirth.
‘Doin’ Okay, Pretty Good’: Again an unreleased song that I have only heard in live recordings. A comforting melody played on guitar that may have expanded to much more dimensions if it had been recorded.
‘How To Take a Fall’: With some harder and decided accents, almost reminding many Heatmiser songs, this unreleased song evokes some danger and a unavoidable fight to come.
‘Taking a Fall’: A quiet song with an intricate guitar melody, about what is obviously a recurrent theme in Elliott’s work. A lot of sadness and hopelessness.
Miss Misery: The song that gave him an Academy Award nomination and made him sung on the same stage than Celine Dion, since the song was used for the Gus Van Saint’s movie ‘Good will Hunting’. A dramatic drum effect follows the lines ‘I’ll fake it through the day/With some help from Johnny Walker Red/Send the poison brain down the drain/To put bad thoughts in my head’, and the song is a long ballad between alcohol metaphors and this Misery character in the arms of which Elliott keeps falling back, as if naming his depression would make it easier. Strangely, the sentence ‘taking a fall’ reappears in this song
‘Our Thing’: An instrumental released as a B-side, with a repetitive and ascending motif, a sort of two voices dialoguing with each other, the voice of the high-pitched guitar and that of the louder keyboard/drum.
‘My New Freedom’, ‘Unlucky Charm’, ‘Rock #1’, ‘Echo Park’ (mentioned by Autumn de Wilde), ‘True Believer’: I never heard these songs.
‘Grand Mal’: A complicated guitar work on a fast driven melody for a song that talks about a deep pain (= grand mal), which may have been the title of the XO album.
It is funny that, at the end of the recording I have listened to, Elliott is saying ‘Forget it, now it’s too fast’, which leads to think he had also recorded a slower version of this song.