Rainy Day Music #3: Elliott Smith

Jesse Paller

Yesterday‰’s jet-grey, somber rain was the perfect setting for this album, my little brother‰’s Rainy Day pick. Last week‰’s album (Turn On The Bright Lights by Interpol) painted a picture of urban depression in big-budget sonic glory. Elliott Smith‰’s self-titled second release gives a similar impression but with muted tones, a stark, acoustic hangover of a Rainy Day Album.

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In 1995, indie rock singer-songwriter Elliott Smith had cut ties with his previous band, the heavy-handed indie pop band Heatmiser, and begun pursuing an acoustic solo career. The previous year‰’s Roman Candle was an austere, lower than lo-fi acoustic affair, hinting at greatness without fully realizing it. ‰’95 brought Elliott Smith, Smith‰’s first album on Kill Rock Stars, which expanded upon the quiet rage and latent sorrow of his debut and transmuted these feelings into a set of 12 perfect songs.

Typical of Smith‰’s pre-DreamWorks output, Elliott Smith is rendered simply. 7 of the 12 songs feature only acoustic guitars and Smith‰’s voice. The rest feature only minimal supplements, such as the tremoloed ghost-electric guitar on “Single File‰” or the wheezing harmonica on “Alphabet Town‰Û. Only three songs (three of the album‰’s best: “Christian Brothers,‰” “Coming Up Roses,‰” and the bleaker-than-bleak anthem “St. Ides Heaven‰Û) feature drums, played with brushes by Smith himself.

I wouldn‰’t call this album‰’s sound lush, but it does manage to be expansive in its own way. The layers and countermelodies of acoustic guitar, born of hours of lonely playing, bring out Smith‰’s unique chord progressions without cheapening them as overproduction might. Every guitar track is necessary, and is like a new voice, further clarifying the musical intent. Evidence: the brief solo guitar overdubbed in heartbreaking album-closer “The Biggest Lie,‰” supplements the rhythm pair, hinting at the song‰’s elsewhere subtle beauty, which, for the moment that the solo appears, becomes blinding.

Elliott Smith ‰’s simple production allows listeners to focus on the heart of the songwriting. Smith‰’s elliptical chord progressions seem drawn from a different musical language than most rock or folk compositions. Moments of brilliance pop up in every song. The sickly opening of “Needle In The Hay‰” leads to the searching chords of “Christian Brothers.‰” “Southern Belle‰” showcases virtuosic fingerpicking, and “Coming Up Roses‰” hides a guitar solo that momentarily outs Smith for the Beatles fan that he was. The rest of the album‰’s mood is established by acoustic dirges like “Clementine,‰” “Satellite,‰” and “Alphabet Town,‰” with lowered tunings contributing to the desolation.

All of this fails to address the other crucial element of this album‰’s sound: Smith‰’s fragile singing. Every song features double- or triple-tracked vocals, sometimes in harmonies and sometimes simply to reinforce the melody. This gives Smith‰’s gossamer, nearly feminine voice a whispering, lulling quality, fainting over the cooing guitars. And his lyrics, always soul-piercing, are at a definite peak on this album.

Tales of addiction, whether autobiographical or simply allegories for unhealthy relationships (Smith‰’s legendary drug abuse didn‰’t actually begin until later in his career), set the lyrical tone. Elliott‰’s characters – loners and late-night staggering drunks – observe moments of small, warped beauty amid the larger haze (“high on amphetamines, the moon is a light bulb breaking‰” on “St. Ides Heaven‰Û).

On “Satellite‰” Smith compares the eponymous “lover‰’s moon‰” to a broken partner, “a burned out world you know staying up all night.‰” On “The White Lady…‰” a forgotten drunk dream “flash[es] on like a cop‰’s light.‰” On “The Biggest Lie,‰” an addict “spent everything you had, wanted everything to stop that bad.‰” And on “Good To Go,‰” over gently dying chords, Smith delivers what might be his ultimate thesis: “I wouldn‰’t need a hero if I wasn‰’t such a zero.‰Û

Of the five albums that the adored musician released before his tragic death in 2003, Elliott Smith showcased the peculiar dark prettiness of his songs in an insular, intimate fashion that he never returned to. While subsequent albums Either/Or and XO are more widely loved and more often considered his masterpieces, this one most perfectly creates its own hermetic reality, one that almost only makes sense within the context of a rained-in day. Its grey-tinged blues are the perfect accompaniment to the melancholy that often accompanies rain. Elliott Smith never delivers the sonic catharsis of our previous Rainy Day Albums, but it provides the perfect, understated despair for you to experience your own.