216. Elliott Smith, "Either/Or"

 

Every once in a while on Twitter the question "what celebrity's death hit you the hardest" and you always get the usual responses - lots of Cobains and Whitney Houstons and River Phoenixes and so forth.  But for sensitive, wounded Gen Xers like myself, Elliott Smith is a not uncommon answer.  It's my answer.  I remember the instant I heard, looking out my office window and feeling shaken and empty and deprived.  I literally could not believe it.  And I wasn't an Elliott Smith superfan!  He just had that kind of impact on me, I guess.

This was his last album before jumping to a major label (selling out, I guess, but I don't remember a lot of selling out discourse at the time; it's possible I missed it), it sounds rough and grainy and homemade, which fits because a lot of it was recorded in people's houses - Smith's own, Joanna Bolme's, the house shared by his former bandmembers in Heatmiser.  A lot of it is just Smith and acoustic guitar - usually multiple tracks of Smith singing, and some overdubbed guitar - but he's starting to incorporate drums and other instruments, a trend that will accelerate in his major label debut, XO, a stunning masterpiece of an album that's my favorite.

But I love this album as well, and when you're roughly the same age as Smith and feel, not like the world has let you down, more like the world never really gave a shit one way or the other, and there's really not much of a point to anything, and you grew up being told you could be vaporized in the almost certain to come nuclear war and then when you got a little older you'd probably die of AIDS and now, hey buck up and join the workforce!  We're all a little fucked up.  Elliott gave voice to all that, especially to the majority of us who had fucked up childhoods in one way or another.

"Between the Bars," the fourth track, is so simple and elegant, a gorgeous offer to help the listener with their struggle:

Drink up with me now
And forget all about
The pressure of days
Do what I say
And I'll make you okay
And drive them away
The images stuck in your head

People you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

That sort-of chorus ends with a minor chord on the "still," making it feel unfinished, hopeless in a way, like the problems aren't going to be solved, and of course, they aren't. 

There are a lot of geographical references on this album.  One song, "Angeles," is a pretty and stark and pretty stark depiction of the enticement of fame and its ultimate emptiness:

I can 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

And of course, Smith's adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon features prominently - walking down Alameda Street in the song of the same name; "Rose Parade," which is ostensibly about the parade in Portland but Smith later clarified is about parades in general - "like the way people parade around and expect you to join in on their peacock march. You know? Someone does, 'We're looking good,' that kind of attitude." 

The album closes with "Say Yes," a song that can still make me choke up at certain times.  There are a million interpretations, but to me it's about being stuck in a relationship that's not moving forward, that's confused and makes you feel unstable.  It's a truly heartbreaking song, the kind of song you put on when you're drunk and upset and just want to feel something, I mean, so I've heard, I wouldn't know about that stuff.

In a way I'm surprised this album, or any Elliott Smith album, is on this list.  This record didn't chart on release and has yet to go gold, i.e., it hasn't yet sold even 500,000 copies.  But more than that, I thought of us as a secret club, like everyone who liked Elliott Smith could probably fit in a medium sized club together and smoke cigarettes and drink bourbon and try to find solace in an unforgiving world.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yes.