I could honestly write about a hundred blog posts on Elliott Smith. His life, his music, his sense of being and his spirit absolutely fascinate me. But mostly it's his music and clever lyrics that are the main draw. I have, quite literally, had four of his albums on constant rotation in my car stereo for the last few months. Normally by now I would have been sick to death of hearing the same songs over and over if it was any other artist I was listening to but not Mr. Smith. He has this uncanny ability to reveal more and more of his psyche each time one of his songs spin into your sub-conscious. In fact some songs carry off this other worldly setting and feeling almost like it is a natural thing. In From a Basement on the Hill, his last album, the opening track Coast to Coast bleeds slowly into an aural soundscape of industrial noise and grimy power pop.
Last stop for a resolution
End of the line, is it confusion?
Hinting at Smith's death which occurred while the album was still in its last stages of being mixed, the "last stop for a resolution" line stands out like the awkward, premonitory line it is. And these lines are also interesting because they point towards a familiar theme in a lot of Elliott Smith's song - this sense of no closure and the fact that he leaves an open ended interpretation dangling in mid air, offering no definite end.
In one of Smith's more famous songs, Angeles, he seems to be saying: Life is cyclical. I will be gone one day but the same scenes will replay themselves over and over until, maybe, one day we pull ourselves out of this karmic knot:
Someone's always coming around here
Trailing some new kill
As much as anything, the song seems like a comment on the decadent nature of the entertainment industry that places itself in this position of a great draining, feeding entity. Whenever I see the song played live, Elliott reminds me of the devil narrating the song. He seems almost to be channeling another worldly entity and the complex structure of the song's guitar arrangement only acts to reinforce this perspective.
I can make you satisfied in
Everything you do
All your secret wishes could right
Now be coming true
The devil will promise the world to whoever listens and wants to be seduced by his charms. The big city lights are a strong pull for those wanting fame, fortune and recognition. The shortcut to all these is where temptation has the biggest sway.
When I am listening to Elliott Smith's music and I allow myself to drift off, sometimes I find myself imagining I am an extra in a movie about his life, watching musical sequences wrap themselves around certain songs. The autobiographical Waltz #2 paints a really vivid picture of a small child reciting anguished lyrics as he observes his mother and stepfather in the early throes of their romance.
First the mic, then a half cigarette
Singing "Cathy's Clown"
That's the man that she's married to now
That's the girl that he takes around town
Later on in the song you can feel this negative entity in the form of his stepfather creating a dark energy over the proceedings. He's already told the young boy he's "no good" and now he's fighting back:
Tell Mr. Man with impossible plans to just leave me alone
In the place where I make no mistakes
In the place where I have what it takes
Smith is making it clear that his life cannot be controlled by an overbearing step-parent who wants to put him in his place. So he retreats into the "place where I make no mistakes " and "have what it takes" i.e his musical talent and ability to create songs that are appreciated by people. The source of a lot of Smith's anger can be found not just in this song but in a song also found on XO called Pitseleh.
Continued in Part 2 >>
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