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Conjecture is all we're left when one end of a conversation disappears. One is left to ponder the why of a decision, to sadly wonder about the fresh silence. Elliott Smith was without question one of the most gifted songwriters of the past decade, a young man with an old soul who succeeded at his goal of combining John Lennon and Paul McCartney in one person. In October, Smith's body was found by his live-in girlfriend at their apartment in Los Angeles, the victim of an apparent suicide, a knife lodged in his heart. At the risk of being morbid, think about that, a knife in your heart. Poetic, nasty and so ridiculously sad, it also follows a dark logic running through Smith's music. In many ways, he seemed too aware, a man who'd seen too much and understood the very nature of the human condition. While I think many of us hoped things would not end this way there was always a sinking feeling that the story would end as it has.
In the months preceding his death Elliott was working on his follow-up to 2000's Figure 8. Partially finished, the tapes have been expanded, finished in a fashion, by musicians and friends who knew him. Reportedly Smith had left behind copious notes indicating how he planned to finish the tracks. This final album, a swan song pregnant with possibilities for conjecture on numerous levels, is a disturbing jewel, beautiful even as you hear hope drain from the man.
Elliott Smith: 1969 - 2003 |
No less than 11 people added to Smith's basic tracks including longtime collaborators Sam Coomes (Quasi) and Jon Brion. There is a palpable struggle between the near sprightly melodies and the double bummer lyrics that evokes fellow sad soul Pete Ham of Badfinger. The handwritten lyrics included in the liner notes are a creepy collection of troubled scrawl that throws even more dark light on what one hears. It's a front row seat to a troubled mind but then again that's always been the intimate position for any Smith listener. His small apartments where his songs came to life are our small apartments. His lack of faith in other people echoes our own low points. The difference is that feeling never seemed to ease for Elliott for more than two or three minutes in a song. As he once sang, "I'm so angry, I don't think this will ever fade."
Perhaps it was Smith's intention to blanket his bleak observations on From A Basement On A Hill in robust candy coating, letting the skipping tunes parry with his frequently nihilistic words. Just as likely though, the added production after his passing may be a defense by his loved ones against the blackness coloring these pieces. Either way, it's a strange dance and one that takes more than a little time to reconcile. Often it is the quieter, sparer tracks like "Let's Get Lost" that work best, feel most honest and share Chet Baker's gift for sighing resignation.
Elliott Smith: 1969 - 2003 |
There are so many threads that might have been explored here. "A Fond Farewell" has all the gracefulness of early solo George Harrison, showing a bruised spirituality that surfaces again and again throughout the record. Some moments make it to us through a heavily clouded fuzz, a metallic tang that sounds like a matured version of Smith's work in his early band Heatmiser. "King's Crossing" is one of his most ambitious and successful reaches in his whole catalog, storytelling with varied layers musically and lyrically, some overt humor leavening the sadness. After the bad dream fade in of "Coast To Coast" it's a vibrant ride and with patience it reveals a whole assortment of wonderful things. Don't expect it to give up its secrets too quickly or maybe at all. Mystery was always a key ingredient in Smith's work and this last salvo is super-saturated with it.
Whether this is the album Smith intended to release or merely some intensely colored-in sketches, it is the last time we'll hear his voice. There will be no more new songs, no new avenues explored. This is it, finito, the end. Like Jeff Buckley, there will likely be a ghoulish excavation of every demo, journal and casually doodled napkin that can be found. Books will be written and more posthumous albums released. But all of it will be guess work and little more. Elliott Smith ended this conversation for all of us and we are left wondering what we might have done for him, how it might have gone differently. Even for those of us who never knew the man except through his music, there was and remains an intense feeling of connection. His clear-eyed perspective on life cut through the treacle and lies so common in popular culture. His feeling that he was "a junkyard full of false starts" reverberates with our own sinking feelings of failure and lack and shortcoming. That he kept going did give hope to myself and myriad others. That he ultimately wasn't able to carry on is a blow and one most of us haven't fully healed from yet. From A Basement On A Hill feels like a letter from a soldier received after he's fallen in battle, a widow's wound too fresh to really comprehend. His drought of faith in the days ahead of him is chilling but all too understandable. Paradoxically, this last album provides a release for our own anguish; it punctures our self-pity and lets in a ray of light to the places we try to keep hidden from the world. It was always Smith's gift to articulate the saddest parts of the emotional spectrum in a way that blunted their edges, made them both easier to bear and to understand. I'm hugely thankful we got to have him around as long as we did. He will live on in the six albums he gave us. It is in those grooves rather than in the endless conjecture that will follow his death that his real legacy lies.
Listen to From A Basement On The Hill with Rhapsody.
Dennis Cook
JamBase | California
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