A stark masterpiece of songwriting and fragile performance, this week’s Sunday classic is the eponymous second album from venerated writer Elliott Smith.
As it approaches its thirtieth anniversary this summer, we wanted to shine a light this week on an album that utterly turned us inside out when we first heard it back in the late nineties and never fails to bring a tear to the eye with each play since. Released on the iconic Kill Rock Stars label, ‘Elliott Smith’ is the second album from the predominantly Portland-based songwriter Elliott Smith. The album followed his debut solo LP - Roman Candle - by almost a year exactly to the day, which was recorded whilst he was still in the band Heatmiser and released to focused excitement on the Cavity Search Records label. After touring with Mary Lou Lord, Smith's new songs were brought to the attention of the Kill Rock Stars label who moved quickly to release an album of material.
Label co-founder Slim Moon noted to Pitchfork on the album’s 25th anniversary reissue that;
"I've always felt like this record is under appreciated. A lot of people overlook Elliott's first two records—they think of them as a prelude to the bigger albums that followed—but when you go back, you discover they're really great. This is Elliott's most fragile and delicate music"
Slim is bang on the dime. Not just from Smith’s remarkable catalogue, but the self-titled album contains some of the most heartbreaking, intimate and undeviating music ever recorded. Smith would progress across the albums that follow (Either/Or, XO, Figure 8 and From a Basement on the Hill) into a performer of cinematic flourish and sweeping production, but the self-titled album is just an extraordinary example of sonic barrenness and emotional anguish.
Largely self-produced, there just isn't a wasted moment. The album opener Needle in the Hay is hard listening, a whispered confessional that sets the focused and unwavering tone that follows. Christian Brothers is so tense, before one of the album’s more melancholic moments in Clementine. Coming Up Roses, Satellite, Alphabet Town; the album is just stacked with utter magic and for the very vast majority of the time, it is just his voice and his guitar.
A few years back a video popped into our timeline and I honestly can’t say how many times i’ve watched it since. As part of the album’s PR run in 1995, Smith was booked to be interviewed and perform on a morning TV show called ‘Breakfast Time’. Alongside the puppets and the poor woman who has been dubbed “Cyber Babe”, the host, Tom Bergeron, crawls through the most trite and flippant interview imaginable as Elliott Smith whispers polite answers back with a wry smirk. But then he starts playing and the entire room in attendance goes through one of the most amazing emotional arcs, hanging on his every word; looks of glossy-eyed existential dread and huge emotional response. It is an amazing and surreal performance.
Elliott Smith is not an easy-going album to listen to, but it is raw and it is vital. When the song is crafted in that way, you can strum it with a thumb and you can whisper the words, it’ll still emotionally hit like a ton of bricks.
Go easy, there just ain’t anything like this one.
