It’s ironic, but no sooner am I working on a review of an introductory compilation to one doomed genius (Syd Barrett) when another one lands on the doormat demanding my attention.
Such comparisons are odious at the best of times, but during his lifetime ELLIOTT SMITH often attracted notices bracketing him with another lost English genius, Nick Drake. Personally, I think his sad demise mirrors Kurt Cobain’s rather more closely, in the respect that neither man had ever intended to court the spotlight and hated the trappings that came with it. Both also struggled with horrendous heroin habits and died at their own hands, leaving behind conspiracy theorists that plague the Internet to this day.
Smith never suffered from the superstar status Cobain railed so hard against, but he had a solid and sizeable fan base and recorded an impressive body of work during his lifetime, producing three albums with his hardcore Punk/Pop trio Heatmiser and five solo LPS: the records his legend is based upon. His legacy is in safe hands with Domino too. They released his almost complete sixth studio album ‘From a Basement on the Hill’ to universal acclaim over a year after his death and a further collection of out-takes, alternate versions and rarities (‘New Moon’) proved every bit as essential in 2007.
Rather like the Syd Barrett compilation, ‘An Introduction to...Elliott Smith’ is aimed at a new generation who either missed out or were too young to get into Smith’s catalogue while he was alive. It’s another of those ‘what it says on the tin’ affairs with 14 tracks culling at least one tune from all seven of his releases, including ‘...Basement...’ and ‘New Moon’. It’s not remotely comprehensive (you could quite easily compile a separate overview with the same title with 14 different tracks) or chronological, but it hangs together beautifully as its’ own entity and it will certainly encourage you to dig deeper if you’ve never heard Elliott Smith before.
Tracks like ‘Last Call’ (“when you start to drink you just wanna continue/ it’ll all be yesteryear soon”) and the chilling, drug-addled ‘Needle in the Hay’ are from his bare-bones acoustic albums ‘Roman Candle’ and ‘Elliott Smith’. There’s beauty there, but it’s always shadowed by despair and the lure of oblivion and it’s only compounded by Smith’s malevolent whisper of a vocal and the intimate, lo-fi lack of production.
These records drew up the blueprint for Smith’s introspective oeuvre, but it truly blossomed with his third album ‘Either/Or’. Although still essentially frail and downbeat, it introduced a fuller band sound and a previously-hidden confidence and is generally regarded as the high watermark of Smith’s curtailed career. ‘An Introduction to...’ is understandably heavy on tracks from it, with tracks like ‘Between The Bars’, the gently nihilistic ‘Pictures of Me’ and the sublime ‘Ballad of Big Nothing’ all present and correct.
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Following ‘Either/ Or’, things changed. As if from nowhere, Hollywood beckoned courtesy of Smith’s contributions to the ‘Good Will Hunting’ OST. David Geffen’s Dreamworks label stepped in, affording Smith much bigger budgets for both ‘XO’ and the under-rated ‘Figure 8’ albums. From these, ‘An Introduction...’ has room for only two selections, though both of these - ‘Waltz #2’ and ‘Happiness’ - are pretty damn gorgeous, showing how well Smith’s songs lent themselves to lush, widescreen arrangements. Heroin kicked in big time post ‘Figure 8’ causing the gap to lengthen between releases, though it seemed Smith had turned a corner in the months before his eventual suicide. Both ‘Twilight’ and the magnificent ‘Pretty (Ugly Before)’ with its’ lovely, Big Star-style chord sequences are from the posthumous ‘From a Basement on the Hill’ and ably support this line of thinking.
As with Syd Barrett – or indeed Messrs. Cobain and Drake – it’s hard not think of where Elliott Smith would have gone next. Frailty and self-loathing may have dogged him, but it was always counter-balanced by superb artistry and a way with a haunting tune that most sane folk would commit jail terms for. Had Elliott survived, these qualities would surely have contributed towards more introspective masterpieces, but what he left us is more than an embarrassment of riches. ‘An Introduction to...’ skims off some of the cream. Start with it and work backwards. You’ll soon understand what the fuss was about.
Domino Records online
Listen to Between The Bars by Elliott Smith on Soundcloud
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