Elliott Smith recorded his fifth album, Figure 8, at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, Sonora Studios in Los Angeles, Capitol Studios in Hollywood, and Abbey Road Studios in London, with the same production team (Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf) as for XO. The 2000 album was released on DreamWorks and was his last completed piece of work before his death.
Son of Sam: Is one of the catchiest songs of the album, with a combination of piano-guitar-drum, layered vocals and cryptic lyrics. After the brilliant opening ‘Something’s happening, don’t speak too soon/I told the boss off and made my move’, you can already presume of some sort of revolt, a tempest of thoughts that culminates when the ascending melody arrives at ‘King for a day’. If the title is a direct reference to a serial killer (David Berkowitz aka Son of Sam), the song is not about him of course, but rather a wandering journey around destruction (with the Shiva reference being a sort of destruction-creation metaphor), the desire to rebel against everything and destroy it in one move,… but Elliott himself said in an interview he did not know what the song was about. There is also in the song some kind of acceptance of his own outsider-like personality ‘I’m not uncomfortable, feeling weird’.
The song was also released as a single, and an acoustic version is the b-side of the ‘Happiness’ single
Somebody That I Used to Know: The light acoustic guitar melody of the song sounds almost upbeat with its underlined melancholy, and its accelerated intricate parts. It’s the end of a relationship and the sentence ‘You’re just somebody that I used to know’ is made to hurt the person it is addressed to, like a punch in the stomach, or may be it is a way to convince himself he is over a person when he is not.
Junk Bond Trader: The intro with that retro sounding piano is probably unique in this song, which continues with a steady drumbeat and a melody driven by crying guitars, bouncing piano, and, once again, layered vocals. The song uses a lot of metaphors about the lack of artistic integrity, the cheapened art sold to the public, ‘Taking out the trash to the man/Give the people something they understand’ and his refusal to participate into this Junk bond trade.
Everything Reminds Me of Her: Another song centered around a failed relationship, a constant theme in the album, as the slow melody focuses on the vocals for most of the song, with a quiet guitar and a heartbroken voice which sings that everything reminds him of her, as if he was crying about an addictive type of love. It is only towards the end that the instrumentation wakes up a little before fading away.
Everything Means Nothing to Me: A haunting melody, which echoes the previous song with the ‘Everything’ in the title. The song begins with a quiet piano tune and some delicate and lonely vocals then evolves into a more grandiose sound with strings, drums and a hypnotic, circular energy like a dead leaf that never seems to reach the ground. The obsessive lyrics ‘Everything means nothing to me’, is repeated like an ascending sad mantra at the end of the song.
LA: A faster and more rocking song that the preceding ones with brilliant guitars, and a powerful chorus ‘L.A.’ which could express rage despite the brightness of the whole song. If it is very much question of the sun with sentences like ‘You’ll be walking in the sun/Living in the day’ or ‘Car’s parked in the sun/Living in the day’, the brightness of an outdoor day in LA contrasting with the darkness of his inner world ‘But last night I was about to throw it all away’.
In the Lost and Found (honky Bach): The beginning of the song, which seems to be played on a tiny toy-piano delivering a piercing honky-tonk sound, surprised everybody and made critics cringe (Pitchfork hated it), although it gives an upbeat feeling to the song which progressively evolves into a bigger and more symphonic sound in the middle, then crashes into a guitar loop (‘the roost’) which serves as a transition for the next song. If the tune seems happy, the lyrics are bittersweet and translate loneliness, ‘I’m alone/That’s okay/I don’t mind/Most of the time/I don’t feel afraid to die/She was here passing by’.
Stupidity Tries: The song builds up progressively several times with multilayered instrumentation, like a series of waves, and after several ‘Stupidity tries’ the climax is reached to calm down a last time before finishing in a long repetitive melodic line emphasizing guitars, chords and drums. This is what Elliott said about the song in an interview: ‘Sometimes I think it’s nice if a song can ramp up and take some twists and turns, like someone walking through a neighborhood and taking a turn into a more industrial area and then winding up in a beautiful park.’
The lyrics are very metaphoric, evoking war, ‘Coloring the sky with ash’, and some mysterious army figure, ’Another drunk conquistador/Conquering the governor’s ball’, a sort of war on relationship, that he knows he is gonna loose, but that he continues to fight because, of course, stupidity tries.
Easy Way Out: Drivem by a gentle acoustic guitar melody over melancholic strings, an exploration that stays quiet the whole time, turning around relational problems while avoiding to face reality and getting out of everything the easy way.
Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud: An elaborate instrumentation for a pop song that explodes in a bigger sound as soon as the second verse, with organ, drums, guitars, and Elliott’s layered vocals evoking what it seems to be a daydream-like story during an airplane trip. He seems asking himself his place in life and his accomplishment along the climbing of the corporate success, as well as his reluctance to be part of the fame business. Despite the title being directly addressed to his mother, this what Elliott said about it: ‘That song wasn’t meant to be specifically addressed to my parents, it’s just an abstract authority that sees you in some mainstream terms. Would they like how your life seems to be? Would they be disappointed? Would they be impressed? Does any of this matter? Or are any of the answers negative, some of them positive?’
Color Bars: A short and fluid melody on piano and guitar, with beautiful string arrangement and percussion, then a piano solo interrupting the lyrics for a short while. There is more use of lyrical metaphors about army/autho
rity figures and war ‘Sergeant Rock broke the key off in the lock’, ‘The battle’s on the ground’, and the line ‘Bruno S. is a man to me’ is probably a reference to Bruno S, a plain looking actor, who starred in films by director Werner Herzog. If the lyrics stay mysterious and the meaning of the song quite cryptic it seems to refer to the power of music with line like ‘High on the sound’, and to his alienation from fame ‘Everyone wants me to ride into the sun’ as well as his resistance to cheapen his art ‘But I ain’t going to go down/Laying low again/High on the sound’.
rity figures and war ‘Sergeant Rock broke the key off in the lock’, ‘The battle’s on the ground’, and the line ‘Bruno S. is a man to me’ is probably a reference to Bruno S, a plain looking actor, who starred in films by director Werner Herzog. If the lyrics stay mysterious and the meaning of the song quite cryptic it seems to refer to the power of music with line like ‘High on the sound’, and to his alienation from fame ‘Everyone wants me to ride into the sun’ as well as his resistance to cheapen his art ‘But I ain’t going to go down/Laying low again/High on the sound’.
Happiness/The Gondola Man, also known as ‘Tom’s start’: The sparse notes of the beginning, then the drum beats install a powerful song, almost Dylan-esque in its style. The song seems to be about lying to oneself in order to never get close to someone and so never get hurt, but it is also about change and redemption with the optimistic line ending the song: ‘What I used to be will pass away and then you’ll see/That all I want now is happiness for you and me’.
The backup vocals are sung by Jon Brion, and ‘The Gondola Man’ is the short instrumental that ends the song; the song was also recorded in an acoustic version, and released as a single with a reversed clip of another song, ‘Take a Fall’ as the instrumental that follows the song.
Pretty Mary K: A shining Beatles-que but original melody with a lot of layered guitars, and vocal harmonies which culminate several times in the song before a last outburst dying in a lonely layer of guitar. Once again, the imagery of war is present with ‘a soldier lying in bed/With a wound to the head’ and later ‘a soldier’s uniform’, as well as some sort of search or fight for a nurturing image (Pretty Mary K, his mother’s name is Bunny Kay), that he doesn’t seem to be able to find ‘Have you seen her? Pretty Mary K’.
I Better Be Quiet Now: An acoustic ballad, a quiet and resigned guitar stream, which just accelerates a little when the lyrics become more enigmatic, referring to a dream about, again, an army-like authority figure. The painfully real lyrics sum up in a few lines how difficult it is to live alone after a failed relationship, ‘A lot of hours to occupy, it was easy/when I didn’t know you yet/ Things I’d have to forget’.
Can’t Make a Sound: The song builds up and up over layers and layers of sadness and powerlessness, until the sound becomes big and triumphant with the lines ‘Why should you want any other/When you’re a world within a world?’, the ultimate declaration about his alienation from the world, his desire to shut himself off from the world, ‘Can’t make a sound/Eyes locked and shining’, after a long search that he now knows is a painful waste of time, ‘Spinning the world like a toy top/Until there’s a ghost in every town’
Bye: A short instrumental piano piece that closes the ‘Figure 8’ album in a haunting and eerie way.
The Japanese release of Figure 8 also included Elliott’s ethereal cover of The Beatles’ song ‘Because’ and ‘Figure 8’, a song from the American series Schoolhouse Rock! Curiously the song was not included on the American release, but gave its title to the album. This is what Elliott said about the idea of a skater making a figure 8:
‘I liked the idea of a self-contained, endless pursuit of perfection. But I have a problem with perfection. I don’t think perfection is very artful. But there’s something I liked about the image of a skater going in this endless twisted circle that doesn’t have any real endpoint. So the object is not to stop or arrive anywhere; it’s just to make this thing as beautiful as they can’.