#ELLIOTT SMITH EITHER OR FULL ALBUM SERIES#

“Either/Or” straddled the line between Smith’s minimalist, ultra-lo-fi past and the more elaborately fleshed-out pop of “XO,” released the following year. I just had this feeling things were going to get bigger for him.” “I didn’t know that he was on that level. He was talking to me about the songs, it was just the ‘getting to know each other’ phase.”Įngineer Larry Crane, a friend of Smith’s and the owner of Portland’s Jackpot studio, where Smith was a constant presence, recorded the now-classic “Either/Or” track “ Pictures of Me,” but he hadn’t heard the whole album until Smith gave him a pre-release cassette. “This seems to be the favorite with people.” Bolme prefers Smith’s self-titled 1995 release, which he was working on just as the two were becoming close. “I knew it was really good, but the two records before it were really good, too,” Bolme says.

It was mostly after recording was finished that everybody realized what had been created. Bolme doesn’t remember much about the sessions, some of which happened in her house. The recording of “Either/Or” was brief and mostly unremarkable. “People that were struggling saw a kindred spirit right away, writing about personal pain in sort of a beautiful fashion.” (He had already released three albums with the alt-rock band Heatmiser, which broke up in 1996.) “People that were sort of damaged recognized that in him right away,” Bolme says. Before “Either/Or,” Smith had released two quiet, mournfully beautiful folk albums just as grunge was reaching its commercial peak.

“Either/Or,” which was rereleased in March in an expanded form with previously unheard tracks, is Smith’s best-selling album, and a repository for many of his most enduring songs. “Then they’d tell me, ‘I grew up listening to Elliott Smith,’ and I’d be like, ‘Okay, that’s why you’re so weird around me.’ ” “People kind of geek out on me and I didn’t really realize why,” she says. Joanna Bolme, Smith’s former girlfriend and longtime bassist for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, is still managing the spillover from the Cult of Elliott.

#ELLIOTT SMITH EITHER OR FULL ALBUM SERIES#

There are signs of him everywhere: On Frank Ocean’s “Blonde,” which pays him overt tribute and interpolates one of his songs in the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” in the Adult Swim cartoon “ Rick and Morty,” which used Smith as the embodiment of angst as the subject of a biography, a documentary film, and a podcast. Twenty years after the release of his career-making album “Either/Or” and more than 13 years since his still-disputed suicide, Smith is being rediscovered by a new generation of fans, attracted by the comforting sadness of his music and the inexpressibly tragic glamour of his death.Īlbum cover for Smith's 2000 release “Figure 8.” (DreamWorks) “He was a great musician, and all his records are still there to be listened to.” “It’s still there, it hasn’t been taken away, but we’re there now, too,” says McElroy, who still sounds surprised at the intense reaction. The owners have installed the missing section inside the restaurant, which they named in part after Smith’s song “Angeles.”įans were not pacified and exacted revenge through negative Yelp reviews. “It’s all been done with very good intentions,” says co-owner Wade McElroy. The owners of newish gastropub Bar Angeles incurred similar wrath when they removed part of the wall (though not, they point out, the part from the cover photo) during construction. Smith’s fans take the wall seriously: Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters covered it with wheat paste in 2010 as part of a promotional stunt, and he had to issue a public apology. The beloved singer-songwriter had posed in front of the mural for the cover of his 2000 album “Figure 8,” and the site has doubled as an unofficial memorial since his death in 2003, at 34. LOS ANGELES - The “S”-shaped mural on the side of a building in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles used to be known as the Elliott Smith wall. Album cover for singer-songwriter Elliott Smith's 1997 release “Either/Or,” which was his best-selling album.

Elliott smith either or full album