On “Between the Bars,” Smith wrote one of his first real standards, a song so potent, bare, and tightly packed-a metaphor about love and addiction that never once tips its hand-that cover artists will be dipping into its well water for decades to come.
Here, he raised his voice from a whisper to something just slightly braver: On “Ballad of Big Nothing,” the chord progression curdles from major to minor like a recurring stomach cramp while he sings about doing “whatever you want to, whenever you want to” with the quavery conviction of a punch thrown with a clammy fist. His finger-picking was so delicate that his little Le Domino acoustic guitar became harp-like-try replicating even the first few chord changes of “Angeles,” and immediately grasp how deep and kaleidoscopic his understanding of the instrument was. On Either/Or, that something became the beginning of Elliott Smith’s Big Nothing, the flowering of his songwriting genius and the first real statement to his hometown of Portland and beyond that he might not just be good, but brilliant like few in his generation. By 1995, he had graduated to his friend Leslie’s house the resulting self-titled album sold zilch and got picked up by almost zero college radio stations–but Fugazi heard it, and so did John Doe, who brought this agonizingly shy kid on tour.
(You can listen to Either/Or below and purchase it on Bandcamp and get more info about Elliot Smith on Facebook HERE.Elliott Smith recorded most of his debut album, Roman Candle, in a dilapidated basement, pressing his guitar strings to a tape recorder. Smith died in 2003, but he left behind a powerful legacy that continues to move people as they discover his music. Was this a fork in the road he should not have taken? We’ll never know. There’s also a markedly different version of “Bottle Up and Explode!,” later re-recorded for XO, that’s faster and with more of an edge.Īfter Either/Or’s release, Smith vaulted back to the majors, and grabbed an Oscar nomination for “Miss Misery” (featured in the soundtrack of the film Good Will Hunting) along the way. There’s a brief melancholy keyboard rendition of “New Monkey” the resigned “I Don’t Think I’m Ever Gonna Figure It Out,” and a demo prepared for Mary Lou Lord of the so-long-I’ll-be-seeing-ya goodbye song “I Figured You Out” (Lord’s version appeared on Martian Saints EP).
There’s a greater warmth in his voice, and a shyness as he banters with the audience “You wanna hear a fast song or a slow song?” he asks at one point as people call out different titles. That’s something that’s more apparent on the bonus tracks, most of which are live songs culled from Smith’s set at the 1997 Yoyo a Go Go Festival in Olympia. “Between the Bars” depicts the sadness of two lost souls drinking their troubles away, and even “Rose Parade” is a bitter dissection of a beloved American experience gathering up the family to watch a parade.īut despite the lyrical gloom, the songs are engaging Smith’s delivery is wry, not despairing. Smith details imploding relationships with a cool casualness: “Nobody broke your heart/You broke your own ‘cause you can’t finish what you start,” he observes in “Alameda.” His previous band, Heatmiser, had stuck a toe in the major label waters, an experience he details with disdain in “Pictures of Me” and “Angeles,” a place where the odds are definitely not in your favor (“And what’s a game of chance to you/to him is one of real skill”). What you find is that despite the gentle, even soothing vocals, is that Smith’s more likely to be spinning out a dark tale than not. And there’s a spareness to the sound (Smith plays all the instruments) that makes you really pay attention to the words. In the album’s liner notes, Kill Rock Stars’ founder Slim Moon notes the difficulty some critics had in taking Smith’s music seriously what was “folk music” doing on KRS, home to more raucous groups like Bikini Kill? Smith’s music wasn’t “folk,” of course, just mostly acoustic. Others were recorded in various apartments Joanna Bolme, who lived in one of those apartments, jokes that that’s the reason “Speed Trials” is so quiet: “It was an apartment, not a house, and we had a neighbor below.” For the first time, Smith was able to stretch out during the recording process, recording on 4-track, 8-track, and 16-track, learning to use the studio like an instrument. Some tracks were recorded in a studio, housed in what used to be a dairy barn. The album was truly DIY in the best Kill Rock Stars tradition. For its 20th anniversary, it’s been revamped into a two-disc set, with the original album remastered, and a second disc of rarities. Either/Or was Elliott Smith’s third album, and his last indie LP.
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