FEATURE:
Between the Bars
Elliott Smith's Either/Or at Twenty-Five
___________
BACK in 2003…
the world received the heartbreaking news that Elliott Smith had died (from suspected self-inflicted stab wounds). The Portland-born songwriter was only thirty-four. In his short lifetime, he left us with some phenomenal albums. One of his very best turns twenty-five on 25th February, 1997. Either/Or was recorded in several locations, mostly in Portland, Oregon, and it was produced by Smith, Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf. Containing tracks such as Angeles, and the immortal Behind the Bars, Either/Or is regarded as one of the best albums ever. It is possessed of masterful and beautiful songwriting throughout. I think that, prior to its twenty-fifth anniversary, more people should listen to it. I am a recent convert of Elliott Smith, and I have spent a lot of time with Either/Or. It is one of the most affecting albums that I have ever heard. To show its reputation and impact, there are some reviews that I want to source, prior to rounding things off. The Observer looked back at Either/Or on its twentieth anniversary in 2017:
“When Slim Moon and Tinuviel Sampson founded Kill Rock Stars in 1991, the record label was distinct among the American indie scene with its roster made up almost exclusively of female artists. That all changed the day Moon signed singer-songwriter Elliott Smith.
The guitarist and vocalist of esteemed Portland indie-pop outfit Heatmiser was no stranger to recording under his own name, crafting a stark, brittle solo debut in 1994 with Roman Candle for the Cavity Search imprint utilizing nothing more than a cheap four-track and a Radio Shack microphone to capture the sound.
Smith expanded his lo-fi setting to include elements of drums, harmonica, cello and organ upon debuting on Kill Rock Stars with his self-titled second solo LP in 1995. Nevertheless, it was an album unique to the company line not only in gender but style as well; the folky wisp of Elliott Smith was a stark contrast to the more aggressive punk energy of popular groups like Huggy Bear, Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney.
But it wasn’t until Smith released Either/Or on February 25, 1997 that his legend was carved in stone.
A genuine pop masterpiece boasting a fuller, richer sound, Either/Or was the launching pad that catapulted Smith from the tiny clubs of Portland to playing the Oscars at The Shrine Auditorium when we was nominated for a song he wrote for Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting.
It became the Cinderella story of 1997: the first male marquee act on Kill Rock Stars ascends from the CMJ charts to the Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song with “Miss Misery”—a song that wasn’t on Either/Or, but which embodies everything that has rendered the LP as Smith’s singular masterpiece to this very day.
Massachusetts alt-folk icon Mary Lou Lord once quipped about her longtime friend that Smith was a quintessential balance of Nick Drake and Lou Barlow. But with Either/Or, Smith established himself as far more than just a master of pastiche. He pushed his deep love for The Beatles to the fore with a sweet, scraggly variation of the kind of intimacy Paul McCartney leaned toward on McCartney and RAM, but his disarming, evocative lyrics and elegant yet vulnerable delivery were pure Elliott Smith”.
Whilst Either/Or was a transitional album from Smith, that did not mean a lack of focus, quality or cohesiveness. Quite the opposite in fact. 1998’s XO was Smith’s first album with a major label, DreamWorks. The A.V. Club discussed how Either/Or was the end of one particular phase of Smith’s career:
“Either/Or represents many poles in Smith’s career. His first release post-Heatmiser would be his last for Kill Rock Stars, the indie stalwart founded by Slim Moon and Tinuviel Sampson in 1991. It’s the beginning of a three-record run with producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf (who’d also worked on Mic City Sons), and the end of Smith’s time in Oregon. The liner notes of Either/Or trace a farewell tour around the singer-songwriter’s adopted hometown, from references to geographic locations (“Alameda”) and local rituals (“Rose Parade”) to the names of fellow scene fixtures who gave him the space to lay down tracks (Joanna Bolme of Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks and Quasi; Larry Crane, with whom Smith would build Jackpot! Recording Studio). While Either/Or says goodbye, it makes a sideways introduction to the geographic muse on Smith’s horizon: “So good to meet you / Angeles.”
Either/Or is, in the purest sense of the word, a transitional work. (Something this very publication noted at the time of its release.) Whereas that term could connote incompletion and uncertainty, for Either/Or, it’s progression. No album so capricious—from the Kiekergaardian disjunction of its title to the “They want you or they don’t” of its closing track, “Say Yes”—should sound so confident, accomplished, and driven. But Smith was nothing if not confident, accomplished, and driven in the studio in the mid-1990s, qualities that are once more evident in the remastered tracks on Kill Rock Stars’ 20th-anniversary edition of Either/Or (due March 10). “He would record one live take of vocal and guitar together, and then he would just double to it once we got it,” producer Schnapf told Pitchfork in 2013.
“It was just absurd. The guitar stuff isn’t even easy. It was ridiculous that he was able to just nail a vocal and guitar performance live, and he was able to double it live again. I mean, it’s not like he’s strumming G, C, D. There’s intricate little fills. It sounds so natural, and so simple—then you try to play it. And sing at the same time. He was just really good. Understated, but really good.”
There’s a modesty to Either/Or that keeps the technical proficiency from overwhelming the proceedings. “It could easily have been bigger-sounding,” Schnapf says in the Pitchfork oral history. “We could have blown it up more, but he wasn’t ready to do it just yet.” Though its instrumentation is bulked-up from the folk-busker arrangements of Smith’s first two records, that instrumentation gets no more ornate than a few keyboard parts. Smith’s chops are always in service of his songs, the complex picking on “Alameda” and “Angeles” or the ripping solo on “Cupid’s Trick” born from and enhanced by his ear for melody and composition. The instrumental breakdown in “Pictures Of Me” is particularly impressive in this respect, as Smith pulls together a few measures of Beatles pastiche that calls to mind multiple eras of the band”.
I hope that, through this feature, I have persuaded a few people to check out Elliott Smith’s Either/Or. It is a sublime album that will definitely receive closer scrutiny ahead of its twenty-fifth anniversary on 25th February. I wanted to write something ahead of time. To round off, I want to bring in a review from AllMusic. This is what they had to say about one of Smith’s masterpieces:
“Elliott Smith's third album sees his one-man show getting a little more ambitious. While he still plays all the instruments himself, he plays more of them. Several of the songs mimic the melody mastery of pop bands from 1960s. The most alluring numbers, however, are still his quietly melancholy acoustic ones. While the full-band songs are catchy and smart, Smith's recording equipment isn't quite up to the standards set by the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The humbler arrangements are better suited to the sparse equipment. "Between the Bars," for example, plays Smith's strengths perfectly. He sings, in his endearingly limited whisper, of late-night drinking and introspection, and his subdued strumming creates a minor-key mood befitting the mysteries of self. "Angeles" is equally ethereal -- Smith's acoustic fingerpicking spins out notes which briskly move around a single atmospheric keyboard chord, like aural minnows swimming toward a solitary light at the surface of the water. The lyrics are a darkly biting rejection of the hypercapitalist dream machinery of Los Angeles (it would make a great theme song for Smith's label, Kill Rock Stars). Ironically, "Angeles" was included on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack, which won Smith the acclaim of Hollywood's biggest, brightest, and best connected voting body, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Smith's stock in L.A. soared after he took his bow at the Oscars with Celine Dion and Trisha Yearwood. It might have been more interesting had he sung "Angeles”.
When people think of the defining albums of the 1990s, I wonder how many people talk about Elliott Smith’s Either/Or? To me, it is as important as anything released in the decade. An album that still sounds so powerful and moving to this day, his final release with the Kill Rock Stars label is absolutely stunning. Even though it is nearly twenty-five years old, the incredible Either/Or…
WILL not fade or age.