(Editor writes: rock nyc has become a rallying place for Elliott Smith fans if for no other reason than our investigation into his death. In 2010, Alyson Camus reviewed every song he ever wrote and we repost here)
‘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.
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.
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 a tongueless 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 Amazon 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 disturbing experience to witness something we should not have.
Elliott Smith’s self-titled and second album was released in 1995 on Kill Rock Stars. Drug and alcohol references are all over the lyrics of the 12 songs, but, as usual, there is much more than it seems at first, and almost each line can be interpreted at many levels. It should be noted that Elliott was not taking drugs when he wrote this album.
1. Needle In The Hay: The opening track set the mood for the album, it’s a dark song with a scary atmosphere, an obsessive melody guitar line throughout the song, and a voice that whispers closer to your ear than ever.
Of course there is a lot of drug imagery with the repetition of ‘Needle’ and with lines like ‘Strung out and thin’, ‘I'm taking the cure’ ‘6th and Powell’ (where drug dealers hang out in Portland), but as always, the metaphoric lyrics are completely open for interpretation and don’t have to be necessary interpreted. It’s more about feeling than meaning. According to some fans, Elliott has said the song could be about a drug addict who is in love with a girl who doesn't love him, so he falls back on his addiction to help him deal with the situation. However nothing in the song leads to such a specific interpretation, there is no girl mentioned, and the line ‘You ought to be proud /That I'm getting good marks’ could be a drug reference (tracks of the needle) or an ironic tirade addressed to his stepfather who should be proud Elliott is getting good grades at school. But drugs should always be regarded as metaphors for problematic relationships, dependency and depression in Elliott’s world, so it could represent any self-destructive behavior people do when rejected or deprived of love.
It’s also an angry song, he seems to say fuck you to anybody with a line like ‘So leave me alone’, and he sings the song as if he was ready to do the worst thing with lines like ‘A dead sweat in my teeth’. The title, ‘Needle in the hay’ refers to something difficult to find, a reference to a pain that is difficult to locate, a hidden source of suffering. The character of the song wearing the haystack charm (a needle in a haystack) around his neck, just like a religious icon, is a powerful image, like advertising the source of his torture. This song was used during the suicide scene for the movie ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ (2001).
2. Christian Brothers: With a powerful melody and some damaging lyrics, the tone of the next song stays angry, determined and full of brutal emotions with lines like ‘No bad dream fucker's going to boss me around’, or ‘Don't be cross, it's sick what I want’. A variation of the f-word is used at several times in the song, ‘fucker’, ‘your motherfucking hand’, ‘fucking clear’, expressing a real degree of anger and violence. The title is a reference to a brand of alcohol, an inexpensive brandy, and like the other alcohols mentioned in this album, there is at the same time a connection with a Christian figure, a reminiscence of the strictly religious Elliott’s upbringing in Texas.
It is difficult to know if Elliott had this in mind but it is interesting to mention that the schools which were funded by the congregation of the Christian Brothers, were the sites of severe physical and sexual abuse toward children. The song seems then once again filled with an intense anger against his stepfather.
3. Clementine: Sung like a slow and sad lullaby or a lost love story with a haunting and ancient-like melody, this song is probably partially inspired from the 1880 popular song Clementine, because of the similarity of the lyrics ‘Oh my darling, Clementine!/Thou art lost and gone forever/Dreadful sorry, Clementine’ which become ‘Oh, my darling/Oh, my darling Clementine/Dreadful sorry, Clementine’ in Elliott’s version. The melancholic lyrics evoke the end of a love affair, the doubt and confusion that follows and the desire to forget everything while falling asleep in a bar. It is also amazing how the lyrics produce a sonic environment as the bartender is singing ‘Clementine’ (probably the old song), and you can hear the sound of the cars in the wet street. The line ‘made an angel in the snow’ is interesting since one of his songs is also titled ‘Angel in the snow’, a double reference to drug and a childhood play.
4. Southern Belle: A nervous guitar line starts the song and the first word you hear is ‘Killing’, as if something terrible was about to happen. Once again it is related to his childhood and the anger he still have toward his stepfather who gives ‘other people hell’ and is ‘killing a southern belle’ (Elliott’s mother). Frustration is all over the song with lines like ‘I live in a southern town/Where all you can do is grit your teeth’ or ‘How come you're not ashamed of what you are?/And sorry that you're the one she got?’ An intense song which is more straightforward than many others.
5. Single File: A lot of drug references throughout the song (even the title could be one), in particular with lines like ‘With dying shooting stars’, ‘Is the same kind of scars’, ‘You idiot kid, your arm's got a death in it’, ‘So help yourself to this bitter pill’, but there is again an indirect use of these allusions. Whatever pain Elliott wanted to exorcise through this song and gain his independence from, it is not necessarily from drug addiction. A single line could be an allusion to conformity that society wants to impose on people and this line ‘But there's a price you'll pay/For trying hard to become whatever they are/And saying whatever they say’ seems to explain it. The price people pay to form a single line, to swallow the same ‘bitter pill’ is the lost of their individuality. So it seems we are then very far away from a literal song about drugs.
6. Coming Up Roses: With an upbeat melody, the lyrics of this song are so surrealistically poetic that the drug, death, and disease imagery is fully open to interpretation: 'The moon is a sickle cell/It'll kill you in time/You cold white brother riding your blood’.
‘Coming up Roses’ has the well-known everything-is-rosy meaning but other meanings: it could evoke the flash of blood that shoots into the syringe when someone shoot up on heroin, or it could be a variation on the expression ‘pushing up daisies’ since he wants ‘to burry’ his love, and later says ‘you're buried below’. The death allusion does not stop there as there is some sort of confusion between the moon and a cell, the moon is ‘a sickle cell’ that ‘will kill you in time’ (sickle cell anemia is a blood disease affecting the red blood cells), and later ‘the moon does its division’ and ‘you're buried below’ just as tumor cells, which divide fast, will kill you.
So where do you go from there? May be it’s all related to the pain you hide inside you, like a vicious disease ‘that nobody knows’ about, but that will kill you.
7. Satellite: The beautiful melody line and the slow delivery of the mysterious lyrics make the song floats like some of the previous ones (i.e. ‘Clementine’). The celestial imagery of the song (moon, satellite) expressed loneliness, disconnection, as the satellite, like Elliott, is ‘a lover’s moon', that stays up all night in a ‘burned out world’.
8. Alphabet Town: With a rare use of harmonica, this song, by its melodic structure, seems to have been written at the same time than some songs of ‘Roman Candle’. Alphabet town is obviously a reference to a part of Portland (or NYC), where all the streets are named with a single letter, a whole city in itself. All the drug imagery of the song could describe a relationship with the wrong person ‘She probably won't say you're wrong/But you're already wrong’, ‘And you threw up whatever she shot down’, ‘Her hand on your arm’. The female character is like a bad temptation, having even an ambiguous name, Constantina (Tina is a nickname for amphetamines), one more way to see a person like a bad addiction.
9. St. Ides Heaven: With a beautifully heavy and haunting melody, this song could be about some dangerous errand, ‘I've been out haunting the neighborhood/And everybody can see I'm no good’, and a profound rejection of everyone else: ‘Because everyone is a fucking pro/And they all got answers from trouble they've known/And they all got to say what you should and shouldn't do/Though they don't have a clue’.
The title is the name of a cheap liquor, which is one more time a religion allusion, linking in one term, addiction, religious childhood, and demons. The imagery of the moon, omnipresent in this album, is again associated with a light bulb like in ‘Coming up roses’, a bulb which is as stubborn as Elliott is because it ‘won’t come down for anyone’.
10. Good To Go: With a slow beginning and a sudden precipitated delivery for the self-deprecating lines ‘I wouldn't need a hero if I wasn't such a zero’, this song could describe the sad aftermath of a relationship, and the impossible task to let it go: ‘All I ever see around here/Is things of hers that you left lying around’, a line a little similar to another one from ‘Everything reminds me of her’ of his ‘Figure 8’ album, and confusingly using ‘you’, so that we are not sure anymore whom he is talking about.
11. The White Lady Loves You More: With a sad and melancholic melody and a title which makes once again reference to a drug addiction and a holy figure at the same time, the song has a solemn delivery and anguished lyrics: ‘You wake up in the middle of the night/From a dream you won't remember/Flashing on like a cop's light’. It is another song describing an addictive relationship which first mentions a woman (the white lady) who seems to be a drug (the white lady is a nickname for heroin or another drug) and which is in fact a real relationship with a woman, since drugs are only metaphors.
12. The Biggest Lie: The almost upbeat tune brings even more confusion to a song which already has some enigmatic lyrics. A fake relationship ending with a killing line ‘and everything that you do makes me want to die’ which could be a refusal of love, an admittance that pain and depression are safer than love, but an afterward realization that he is telling himself a lie. ‘I just told the biggest lie’.
The images in the song are much more real than in the other songs with ‘The subway that only goes one way’, and ‘a crushed credit card registered to Smith/ Not the name that you call me with’. And this last line could lead to think he is not talking about a relationship with a girlfriend but with his mother who may still call him with his real name.
Elliott Smith said once that his songs usually don’t have a point, that they are usually ‘more descriptive, more impressionistic like a bunch of photographs burned into each other.’ He couldn’t be more right and that’s why it is so difficult to talk about them, as they work for themselves. Too much explanation would destroy them and remove their magic. In 1997, at the age of 28 and just before his move from Portland to New-York City, Elliott released Either/Or, his third and last album on Kill Rock Stars. An orchestral version of ‘Between the bars’ and his version of two other songs (‘Angeles’ and ‘Say Yes’) became part of the soundtrack to Gus Van Sant’s critically acclaimed movie, ‘Good Will Hunting.’ The following year, ‘Miss Misery’ of the same soundtrack, was nominated for best original song in the 1998 academy awards, although this song only appears on the 2007 posthumous collection ‘New Moon.’ Gus Van Sant seems to have a special attachment to Elliott’s music as he used ‘Angeles’ again for another of his film, ‘Paranoid Park.’
Interestingly enough, the song named Either/Or does not figure on the album of the same name and was only released on ‘New Moon.’
Either/Or was named after Søren Kierkegaard’s book of the same title. Thus, it is impossible to avoid the melancholy, the absurdity and meaninglessness of life that saturate the album.
1. Speed Trials: A febrile energy emanates from ‘Speed trials,’ although you cannot be sure what exactly this song is about. Running back to the same ground? Running fast while standing at the same place? Just like the Red Queen's race in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass where Alice is constantly running but remaining in the same spot. If a speed trial is a test to see how fast something can go, the song is just plain ironic.
2. Alameda: ‘Alameda’ is full of self-accusation, it is a confession of a lack of courage when it comes to relationships and the most honest admittance of shortcomings. He is the one who has the most ability to break his own heart.
‘Nobody broke your heart/You broke your own because you can't finish what you start/Nobody broke your heart/If you're alone it must be you that wants to be apart’
As in many songs, it’s not sure if the use of ‘you’ is him addressing to someone, or him talking to himself, but the songs being at the same time very personal and completely universal, this trick makes the connection with the listener so easy.
3. Ballad of Big Nothing: Passed the imagery about drugs in the song, which could be there only to build up the absurdity of the situation, there is a nihilistic nature to the ‘Ballad of big nothing’ and an existential reminiscence of a character from a Dostoyevsky’s novel.
‘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/Now you can do what you want to whenever you want to/Do what you want to whenever you want to/Do what you want to whenever you want to though it doesn't mean a thing/Big nothing’
Even though you have free will, it does not mean anything since life is a parade about nothing.
4. ‘Between the Bars: ‘Between the bars’ has the fluidity and the softness of a liquid lullaby. A lullaby sang to a bottle? And even though it seems at first obvious that the bars are the public establishments, they become progressively the jail of the addiction. It is very often the case for Elliott, a word has many incarnations in the same song, and you are not sure of what’s going on, to your own delight. You could imagine the song sung by alcohol itself to its lover as there is a romantic imagery going on with lines like ‘Drink up, baby, look at the stars, I'll kiss you again between the bars.’ If alcohol, or love, or any addiction makes you promises and cures everything, the outcome is ambiguous and the lure of any addiction keeps you from your true potential.
5. Pictures of Me: ‘Pictures of me’ is an angry song, a shout out loud against fame and make believe as ‘Everybody's dying just to get the disease.’ The eternal dilemma between the appeal of fame and the downside of it as it comes with falsehood.
It could also work as a mirror song, any other person having the possibility to be a bad picture of yourself that you see everywhere and can’t escape
6. No Name #5: Isolation, alienation and apathy invade you when listening to ‘No name #5,’ one of the songs Elliott did not even bother to give a title to. The bitten fingernails translate fear and anxiety and the melody makes the inertia even more obvious. It’s all about this paradoxical feeling to be at the same time relieved and lonely when a broken relationship is ending, ‘Got a broken heart and your name on my cast/And everybody's gone at last’
7. Rose Parade: There is so much withdrawal in ‘Rose parade’ it makes you uncomfortable, while the singing tone reinforces the passivity of the narration. It’s a total refusal to join the Rose parade, the life parade for what it is, just a parade and a masquerade. The absurdity of the situation only generates indifference and self-loathing: ‘It's just that everyone's interest is stronger than mine/And when they clean the street I'll be the only shit that's left behind’
But you are not sure if the self-hatred is real or if it is others’ opinion because he is an outsider.
8. Punch and Judy: Don’t be fooled by the softness and the whispering tone of ‘Punch and Judy,’ it is not a love story, rather a pretty trouble relationship. It evokes this sadness and uneasiness associated with behaviors that are hurtful but have to be repeated anyway, the comfort felt in the pain inflicted to others when the situation is familiar.
9. Angeles: There is some kind of Faustian theme in 'Angeles' (‘Sign up with evil’), the temptation is all over the song, and the city of angels can be as attractive as the demon. It really does not matter if he is really talking about LA, the seduction of the danger is present at each line (‘a hundred dollar bill,’ lose the gamble,’ ‘the cards left to play,’ ‘with my poison arms around you’) and the delicate guitar picking could evoke the beauty of the devil. ‘I could make you satisfied in everything you do/All your "secret wishes" could right now be coming true/And be forever with my poison arms around you/No one's going to fool around with us/No one's going to fool around with us/So glad to meet you’
10. Cupid Trick: ‘Cupid’s trick’s lyrics do not figure on the booklet and it’s not exactly clear why, but you cannot deny the dangerous and intense feeling that emerges from the way song resonates. Elliott said that he omitted the lyrics because that song was not about the words but about the way it sounded and that he kept changing the words around. The songs seems intensively personal but at the same time the loudness of the words was more important than the meaning.
11. 2:45 AM: There is no doubt you witness something painful with ‘2:45 am.’ It’s close to voyeurism, as if, for once, Elliott was writing an autobiographical song. He makes you wandering in the streets early morning, after what it seems to be a violent familial fight. The song translates a terrible anger, a clear disorientation and a heartbreaking loneliness but also a lot of courage.
12: Say Yes: I’m not sure if ‘Say yes’ is the cute and happy song it appears first, Elliott said he wrote this song in five minutes, music and words, after breaking up with his girlfriend, so it’s hard to understand why he would have been so insanely optimistic. You cannot deny the appeal of the melody and the totally irresistible lyrics such as ‘I'm in love with the world through the eyes of a girl, who's still around the morning after.’
This song goes up and down like any relationship and each line becomes the positive or the negative of the previous one: ‘A happy day and then you pay,/And feel like shit the morning after/But now I feel changed around and instead falling down/I'm standing up the morning after/Situations get fucked up and turned around sooner or later/And I could be another fool or an exception to the rule’. He knows the inexorable end and how life dictates what is going to happen but hope is such a hard thing to kill.
Either/or is full of little but defiant masterpieces which, very quietly, scream man’s struggle and despair in a incredibly effective manner.
XO (1998) is Elliott’s Smith’s fourth album but his first work released on the major label DreamWorks. XO feels more produced than the previous ones with a much fuller sound, and, except for a few songs, Elliott plays all the instruments, from acoustic guitar to piano, bass drums, chamberlain, mellotron-track piano… nevertheless it is not a departure from what he had done before, it is just the same authenticity with the use of a more orchestral sound combined with his amazing guitar picking style. As Aimee Mann put it in an interview: ‘He is on DreamWorks, but, believe me, he's not modifying himself at all.’ A possible title for the album was ‘Grand Mal,’ but as there was a band already named that way, Elliott had to come back to his first idea, XO. He recorded several songs during the XO sessions that do not figure on the album, and among them a song named ‘Grand Mal.’
The 14 songs offer a vast area of musical landscapes from an a cappella song, ‘I didn’t understand,’ whose overlapped vocals remind a Brian Wilson composition, to a drum driven tune ‘Waltz #2,’ or a cheerful piano composition “Baby Britain.’ But as always with Elliott, the lyrics can be disturbing and poignant.
Even though it is not a concept album, there are some common themes that keep coming back in the songs, themes like failures and deceptions over relationships, alienation and desire of sabotage when the perspective of happiness seems too uncomfortably close, but also hope that things can change. Some songs are heavily tainted by memories, childhood memories like in Waltz #2, a song about his mother singing in a karaoke bar in front of Elliott’s step father, whom a line is addressed to: ‘Tell Mr. man with impossible plans to just leave me alone.’ The most famous line in the song (and perhaps the most famous line in all Elliott’s songs) ‘I'm never gonna know you now, but I'm gonna love you anyhow’ has become a anthem for the lost fans after his tragic death.
Titles of several popular songs are used in XO, and two of them are in Waltz #2, ‘Cathy's Clown’ by the Everly Brothers and ‘You're No Good’ sung among others by Dee Dee Warwick and Linda Ronstadt. Being about trouble relationships and beaten women, the choice of the songs subtly add to the uneasiness of the atmosphere, and ‘Waltz#2’ translates all the unsaid when abuse occurs in a family and the inertia due to fear. Because it means little one, ‘Pitseleh,’ is probably also an evocation of his trouble childhood, so that we are not sure if he is talking about a failed love relationship with someone or himself.
Two other musical references are appropriately used in the beatlesque ‘Baby Britain,’ a song whose evocative imagery of ocean, alcohol and isolation is largely open for interpretation ‘Revolver's been turned over/And now it's ready once again/The radio was playing "Crimson and Clover".’
The desire of sedation and isolation from pain is all summarized in the line 'Deaf and dumb and done' which is in both ‘Sweet Adeline’ and ‘Tomorrow, Tomorrow’
'Amity’ named after a girlfriend, was written in a couple of minutes, just for the way the words sound.
‘Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands’ which deals with his time in a rehab clinic in Arizona, is mostly a fuck-you song as a category of Elliott’s songs are. It describes a rejection of his depressed songwriter image and a refusal of the attention and false sympathy he is getting for this reason. It is an affirmation of living the life he wants because it is his only path as an artist.
There is also a large utilization of pictures as metaphors for memories, regrets or even anger, like in the beautiful and almost ancient sounding ‘Waltz #1’: ‘Every time the day darkens down and goes away pictures open in my head/Of me and you silent and cliché all the things we did and didn't say,’ or like in the slow and quiet ‘Oh Well, Okay’ which evokes the melancholy of pictures disappearing ‘The bleeding color gone to black, dying like a day’, ‘I got pictures, I just don't see it anymore,’ or even in the opening track ‘Sweet Adeline’ whose title was inspired by his grandmother’s singing club, Sweet Adelines International: ‘Cut this picture into you and me/Burn it backwards kill this history.’
The utilization of colors in the songs add to the scenery of the album in the powerful ‘Bottle Up and Explode!’ a song about repressing frustrations and anger inside yourself until the emotional outburst makes you see ‘red white and blue,’ sort of confused fireworks in your head. But the most ‘colorful’ song is ‘Bled White,’ which evokes Portland, the ‘rose city on the 409,’ the ‘white city on the yellow line’ which bled white. It’s probable not a coincidence if ‘Bled White’ is the 7th song of an album of 14th, it is sort of a center point because of its essential meaning. The city/world is colorless and bleak, but Elliott is ‘a color reporter’ and his task, as an artist, is to make it bloom in full colors, at the risk of being ‘high to drag the sunset down/And paint this paling town.’ He puts the finger on the burden of the artist to go beyond the ordinary, a heroic figure ready to make a sacrifice of himself.
Preceding ‘Bled White,’ the beautiful melody of ‘Independence Day’ brings hope to the album by using a metaphor of the butterfly metamorphosis: change is possible, things are going to work out despite everything else. The line ‘You only live a day/but it's brilliant anyway’ may be seen as a sad prophecy, but it should not be.
As Neil Young said ‘Some people have taken pure bullshit/And turned it into gold.’ With its introspective lyrics and its brilliant melodies, XO is a brutally honest but also healing journey.
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) than for XO. The 2000 album was released on DreamWorks and was his last completed piece of work before his death.
1. Son of Sam: It is probably one of the catchiest songs of the album, with that this 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
2. 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 in fact he is not.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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’.
7. 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’.
8. 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.
9. Easy Way Out: A song driven 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.
10. 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?’
11. 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/authority 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’.
12. 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.
13. 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’.
14. 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’.
15. 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’
16. 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’.