Five years ago, Elliott was still prevaricating between folk and rock, still as likely to pick up his guitar and strum a heartbreaker as to front a very loud rock band. And then he disappeared into married life with Fiona Apple only showing up for a love song to his newly born daughter Blueberry (everyone calls her Blue) Smith on Fiona’s 2009 hit album (which Elliott also produced).
Fiona, certainly a depressed enough young lady, and Elliott, who has fought and beaten enough demons for a life time, seem like a natural now but the East Coast/West Coast love affair was thought very uncool at the time.
Elliott did the right thing and left L.A. for NYC and they currently live on the Upper West side and record in the West Village.
The years of silence leading up to the new release had lead to rumours that the change on Coasts, and the obvious happiness Smith has found, have left him blocked and though in the past two years he has been playing around Ludlow street, secret gigs at the Mercury Lounge and a blowout at the Beacon Theatre last New Year’s Eve, seemed to belie it, the silence was deafening.
Today Spark And The City Lights was released. A tight, hard rock album mixing ballads, uptempo 50s style rockers and acoustic Smithy numbers without the acoustic guitars.
It is a smash.
With a back up band that includes various members of the Strokes and Titus Andronicus (check out the violins on “Hybrid Dance Mechanics”) as well as Apple on keyboards and Elliott on an early 60s style Gibson, the band has the mechanics down to a fine art and while Smith can be given to despair (“And when we fall off the Calliope, we both know you’ll push me, the apple never falls far from the tree” he sings in a rare moment of doubt), the song, here a stirring ballad that moves faster and round and round on two conflicting riffs, there is a sense of catharcism: the end of the song sounds like waking from a nightmare with a crash of drums and Patti Smith, singing back up, till the end where she takes it over.
A highlight no doubt, but it doesn’t get away from the yelps of joy on “It Could Be A Friday” or the sexy, intoxicated and lustful “Bury Me Naked”.
The first single, also the theme song for the next Bond movie, “Smile, Kill, Die’ is already the most popular download of the week, and the album seems poised to break the just gone 40 year old bigger than ever. Wonder if we will see him on the Oscars again?