‘Figure 8’ by Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith is an artist I’ve come to with little sense of order. I don’t have all his albums, and those that I have were acquired as and when the opportunity arose. Because of this, I’d paid little attention to the development of his music before this listening project. However, ‘Either/Or’, one of his early albums, was a recent listen, and the contrast between that and ‘Figure 8’ is very apparent.

Released on a major label, and with all the budgetary implications that this brings, ‘Figure 8’ is a brilliant record. The familiar aspects of Smith’s work – the fragile solo voice, the luscious Beatles-esque harmonies, the wonderfully constructed melodies – are all present, and displayed fully, but ‘Figure 8’ has a depth to its arrangement that simply wasn’t possible on his earlier records. ‘Son Of Sam’ may start the album with a fairly conventional, if great, slice of acoustic indie, but mixed in amongst the conventional tracks (‘Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud’, ‘Stupidity Tries’, ‘Junk Bond Trader’) are the wonderfully simple (‘Somebody That I Used To Know’, ‘Everything Reminds Me Of Her’) and the more ambitious. ‘Everything Means Nothing To Me’ makes very effective use of a tumbling piano line and a layered vocal track before exploding into waves of strings at the end. ‘In The Lost And Found’ is built entirely around a honky-tonk piano line – presumably played by Smith – that is hugely more impressive than any of the keyboard parts in his early work, and a real testament to his growth and development as a musician.

You could make a case for saying that ‘Figure 8’ is less immediate, less intimate, than Smith’s earlier records, and this would be a justifiable criticism, but anything it lacks in these areas is more than compensated for by its sheer quality.

‘Either/Or’ by Elliott Smith

The solo career of Elliot Smith can be divided into two fairly clear sections. Part one consisted of three albums, of which this is the third. Part two began with his ‘best song’ oscar nomination and finished with his tragic early death. As his career picked up more attention, his albums production became more ambitious. At the time of ‘Either/Or’, however, an Elliot Smith album was still a very low key affair. Smith would play all the instruments on the album himself, giving the record a very home-made feel. This would be pretty effective. Smith was a much better guitarist than he was, say, a drummer, but his skills in other instruments were certainly adequate to the task.

‘Either/Or’, then, is a lovely album of music. Every one of its twelve tracks is a delicately assembled piece of songwriting, and there’s just enough range between its gentler songs and its more upbeat ones to give the album the breadth it needs. Smith’s voice is an extra-ordinary thing. On its own, it’s slightly thin and fragile on its own, but when he layers it up to sing in unison or harmony with himself, it makes for a Beatles-esque collage of richness, worth the purchase price on its own.

It’s this kind of record that makes this project worthwhile. I got it as a Christmas present a few years ago having come to Elliot Smith through his later work, and although I’d listened to it, I’d not paid it much attention. This time round, I’ve been listening to it solidly for almost a week, and loving it. I will definitely come back to it.