Category: Blog

ALBUM REVIEW: ELLIOT SMITH- Elliot Smith

BEST TRACKS: Christian Brothers, Needle in the Hay, Coming Up Roses, Alphabet Town, St. Ides Heaven

While it’s true that Elliot Smith burst upon Soundscape SuperhighwayTM with “Miss Misery”, which played during the end credits of 1997’s “Good Will Hunting”, Smith’s 1995 eponymous album is clearly his best work.  I’m absolutely serious. There’s absolutely no question. Any piece of Smith’s musical legacy found itself originally fully realized on this album.  Thin, croaking vocal lines; meandering guitar plucked by spindly digits; a gloom which rests on delicate instability; it’s all here. And by no means am I disparaging his later work.  Either/Or, XO and Figure 8 still employ everything that distinguishes Smith’s incredibly unique songwriting, but it’s through “Elliot Smith” that this was first done with full confidence. Here, Smith is momentarily plateaued in all of his strengths; stuck in a moment where his songs operate as an extension of him with perfect efficiency.  So, I admit, the soggy singer-songwriter in 2019 is a little played out. But in 1995, Elliot Smith perfected it. I guess if you like that stuff, you might want to steer clear of this album. Otherwise, everything else will fall tragically short.

It’s hard to say whether Elliott Smith fits ridiculously well into the niche of mid 90sdom or invented it.  Smith, while still playing with his INDIE ROCK band Heatmiser, had released his debut acoustic album “Roman Candle” in 1994.  On it, Smith first made evident his ability to blend inconspicuous yet incredibly intricate guitar parts with a wire-thin vocal line spouting perplexingly intimate lyrics.  And beyond that, Smith was able to manipulate all of these assets by simply layering lo-fi single mic recordings. Now that’s what I call DIY. To no surprise, Smith quickly gained a following in Portland (Christ this has to be the fourth album I’ve reviewed that’s included Portland being really into something before everyone else) despite extremely limited success anywhere outside of the city.  Smith’s first encounter with, albeit limited, success came when Mary Lou Lord happened upon one of his shows and was understandably blown away. She immediately asked him to tour with her, and he was subsequently signed to Kill Rock Stars. So what does an up-and-coming, yet under-appreciated, mid 90s sad guitarist/singer who recently got signed on an alternative label following a groundbreaking live performance do, you ask?  Well, write an insanely depressing album of course. And so, “Elliott Smith”, the album, was born.

Similar to “Roman Candle”, this album perfected the lo-fi, single microphone in a room approach which Smith’s music is usually automatically associated with.  Expanding upon simply double-tracking his vocals while plucking a guitar whose leads gasp from being drowned by an open-string drone, “Elliott Smith” manages to further manipulate this sparse pairing by weaving the two together in incredibly subtle ways.  “Needle in the Hay”, the album’s opening track, is the pinnacle of Elliot Smith’s art of master production. I’ll try to do this song justice here but I can’t make any promises that I will. Smith begins strumming down on five chords that have been stripped of all but their bare essentials, building a tension which creeps up your spine as Smith barely mumbles out the melody which has been placed directly on the listener’s ear.  It’s unsettling, to say the least. But right as you think you’ve found a center to the song, a stasis in its delivery, the chorus begins seemingly out of nowhere. Smith’s classic double-tracked vocals slide into to layer above what first appeared to be a standard verse. It’s a deeply disturbing song which most exemplifies Smith’s ability to articulate a soul in decay. Christian Brothers and St. Ides heaven manage to accomplish a similar feat, though through a more straightforward approach.  Christian Brothers, especially, highlights Smith’s use of barren, inverted chords and hauntingly beautiful vocals, with its chorus whispering with a careening falsetto. Coming Up Roses offers a more upbeat sampling of Smith’s songwriting prowess, but still reverberates with the same energy of defeated instability that blankets the entirety of the album.

Elliot Smith’s second album is definitely the darkest, emotionally raw output of a career which unfortunately ended abruptly. Though Smith’s 2003 suicide(?) should by no means be romanticized, it’s impossible to remove this album from an artist who was clearly disturbed.  Listening to it sometimes sucks, because Elliott Smith does such a good fucking job of making music about absolute desolation.

-Cliff Jenkins

CLASSIC REVIEW: Ariel Pink- The Doldrums

BEST TRACKS: Let’s Build a Campfire, For Kate I Wait, Among Dreams, Don’t Think Twice (Love)

When first listening to The Doldrums, you might find yourself asking, “is this a joke”.  And to answer your question, dearest reader, yeah. Or maybe not. But how could it not be? If it is a joke it’s a really good one in the sense that it’s really funny, but an absolutely moronic one when taking into account how much Ariel Pink put into its setup.  So as of now, we’ll look at it as something in the middle, a comment, if you will on, say, society. Even then I’m probably giving it more of a serious analysis than it deserves, but at the end of the day, it’s an album. A really fucking good album, one that makes you question why you even like music.

So it’s 1999 at CalArts.  One Mr. Ariel Pink is disillusioned with the entire concept of art school, is heavily in the midst of a drug binge, and has his Senior Project coming up.  So what does he turn in? Well, his debut album of course. Well, we should call it what it really is: an anti-album. Concocted deep within the infamous, denatured Pink brain, The Doldrums sounds like an assortment of samples taken from daytime television that Ariel recorded him singing on a whim after returning home shitfaced.  But the instrumentation is his. Placed far behind his vocals, Ariel reverbs and generally distorts his self-made backing tracks to shellac over them an air of dissociation and lethargy akin to when you watch too much TV in the middle of the day. But at the end of the day, the compositions sound good and are written well. So when Ariel cries over them in a mocking falsetto it’s confusing: who is he making fun of if not himself and music itself? In all honesty, it’s probably both.  And in case you were wondering, Ariel set up a booth that he sold his CD out of for his senior project. There’s no word on well he did academically, but the CD eventually made its way to Animal Collective, who subsequently signed him.

It’s really difficult to actually analyze the songs on this album.  First of all, the “mixing” melts together synths, guitars, knee-drums, random chirps, TV samples all into a honey-lacquered stew that doesn’t quite sit still within the belly.  Secondly, The Doldrums goads you to take a deeper look into it, only to eventually point and laugh at you once you’ve already spent hours dazed in its taunting sweetness. That’s the most infuriating part of this album.  It’s really clear that Ariel is making fun of saccharine stock music, cheesy love songs, and just popular music as a whole. But he does it with really amazing melodies. “Among Dreams” and “For Kate I Wait” strike me as the easiest examples of this, though not the best.  I mean this in that they benefit from a mix which favors Ariel’s vocals so my point is most readily available. Both live in a rounded synth line that blankets everything but Ariel’s falsetto delivering some of the catchiest melodies I’ve ever heard. Occasionally, the listener may get confused into thinking they were just listening to a lo-fi pop song, but then there’s something up there in the corner of your ear.  What is it? Well, it’s a three-stringed guitar of course, or maybe some knee slap drums. Ariel Pink does not give a fuck about this music, it just springs forth effortlessly. Songs such as “The Ballad of Bobby Pyn” only suffer in that Ariel draws them out too much, stringing along a drowsy atmosphere for over ten minutes while occasionally delivering some half-sung half-line. And just as you go to get mad that you’ve been listening too long, you realize that that’s the point. You’ve been duped.

 – Cliff Jenkins