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. Either/Or, his third album released on Kill Rock Stars in1997 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.
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.
‘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.
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.
‘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.
‘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
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’
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.
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.
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’
‘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.
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.
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.