All The Things We Did and Didn't Say - Elliott Smith's XO turns 20
In October of 2017, my wife and I took a vacation to the
Pacific Northwest—visiting both Seattle (and areas outside of it), as well as
Portland. While in Seattle, we spent part of a day at the Museum of Pop
Culture—primarily there for the Jim Henson exhibit that was going on at the
time, I had been made aware that Elliott Smith’s piano was somewhere in the
museum and we couldn’t leave until I found it.
A 1919 Cable upright, the piano was housed in Portland’s
Jackpot! Records recording studio, and was famously used on his Academy Award
nominated song, “Miss Misery,” from the film Good Will Hunting, as well as on two songs from his major label
debut, XO, released in August of
1998.
We didn’t have to look very hard or travel very far into the
museum to find his piano. As you ascend the stairs to get into the museum, mere
moments after you have paid your admission, there it is—resting on a ledge,
tucked behind a small plexiglass guard, with an informational placard off to
the side.
The piano’s sudden appearance in front of me took my by
surprise. Maybe I wasn’t ready for it. Prior to this moment, I had wanted to
feel something when I saw his piano—I
thought seeing it would provide some kind of emotionally cathartic experience
for me.
It didn’t. I felt nothing. Maybe I felt rushed, because my
wife wanted to go see the rest of the museum and not stand on a staircase all
day with people trying to get around us.
I took a few photos. We continued walking.
My feelings never change a bit, I always feel like shit.
I don’t know why, I guess that I ‘just do.’
XO is, more than
likely, not the follow up that longtime fans of Elliott Smith were anticipating
at the time. Released just a little over a year after his 1997 effort, Either/Or, his final for the Pacific Northwest
indie label Kill Rock Stars, there is a literal night and day difference
between the two records.
But if you take a step back, you can see that Smith was
working, albeit at his own pace, toward a slightly bigger sound—Either/Or, unlike its predecessors,
features ‘full band’ arrangements. During these ramshackle, lo-fi years,
‘full-band’ meant, like, the addition of electric guitar, bass, and a drum kit
that, in some cases, sounds like it’s on the verge of falling apart.
In the wake of the minor success that Either/Or had at that time, filmmaker Gus Van Sant tapped Smith to
contribute songs—many of them previously released—to his 1997 film, the Matt
Damon/Ben Affleck star-making turn, Good
Will Hunting. Along with a handful of old Smith songs, he recorded a new
one as well, “Miss Misery,” which is the first glimpse of what Elliott Smith
was capable of, given enough of a sonic palate (and money, I guess) to work
with.
It was during this whirlwind time that Smith walked a fine
line of juxtaposition—something he would do throughout his short life and
career. There were parts of him that were thriving—while he would shy away from
the spotlight and claim in a candid interview that he was ‘the wrong kind of
person to be big and famous,’ the successes he saw with Either/Or and “Miss Misery” allowed him to ink a deal with the then
fledgling major label, Dreamworks.
It was also around this time where parts of him were sinking
deeper into substance abuse and depression. Prior to the drugs he began using
during the sessions for Figure 8,
Smith had developed a serious drinking problem while promoting Either/Or, and was regularly mixing
copious amounts of alcohol with prescription antidepressants. He regularly
claimed he wanted to take his own life—trying a few times, with one infamous
attempt where he tried to jump off a cliff in North Carolina. Many within his
circle of friends in his beloved Portland have stories of staying up with him
all night, trying to talk him back down.
While Figure 8 is
truly a ‘L.A. record’ for a number of reasons, even though XO was recorded in multiple locations in Los Angeles (and two songs
in Portland), it is Smith’s ‘New York record.’ Despite the concern of his
friends, Smith abandoned the Pacific Northwest and moved to New York during
this time as well.
Kaleidoscopic is a word that best describes the music of XO; rollicking, and also ‘Beatle-esque’
come to mind. It’s a vivid, brightly colored atmosphere, which is kind of
funny, in a dark sort of way, considering the lyrical content of many of these
songs. But that has always been one of the very best things about Smith as a
songwriter—his ability to dress up something incredibly sad or stark with a
Technicolor musical arrangement.
20 years after the fact, albums like XO don’t happen anymore; and if they do, it’s not on a major label,
and it’s an ambitious undertaking for both the artist willing to put for this
much effort, as well as a label of any size that’s willing to back it.
Dreamworks, as a label, was, like, roughly two years old
when it released XO—founded by David
Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the label distributed its
releases through Geffen, and had a baffling roster of artists including Rufus
Wainwright, Chris Rock, Eels, Morphine, and Henry Rollins. The label itself
didn’t even make it a decade before shuttering in 2004 in the merging and
folding of imprints into larger entities that regularly occurred during the
early 2000s.
Smith claimed inking a deal with a major label wouldn’t
impact the creative control he had over his music—“(Major labels are) actually
comprised of individuals who are real people, and there’s a part of them that
feels like part of their job is to put out good music.”
The label, at least in the early days of Smith’s time with
them, was incredibly supportive.
As a collection of songs, XO is at times, incredibly angry, as well as pensive and
regretful—at times, all of those emotions and more wind up converging in the
same song. There are moments that recall Smiths’ earlier material—even with
this larger budget to work with, the hushed, spidery thin, and double-tracked
vocals are still ever present, and there are a number of songs throughout XO that do not stray very far from
Smith’s humble acoustic beginnings, like the jaunty strumming and plucking of
“Tomorrow Tomorrow,” the melancholic ruminations of “Pitseleh,” and the
relatively simple arrangement that begins the stunning, “Oh Well, Okay,” before
it ascends into its sweeping string section accompaniment.
Smith’s songs were almost always pensive and regretful, and
often times about substance abuse—though he claimed he was using the imagery of
addiction as a metaphor (at least early on), the anger, or at least the
resentment, in such a blatant form and direct form. That, for the most part,
stems from the growing concern his circle of friends voiced regarding his
descent into alcoholism—you can hear it boiling over near the record’s end on
“Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands”: “You
think you mean well, you don’t know what you mean,” he snarls. “Fucking ought to stay the hell away from
things you know nothing about.”
There is a lot to unpack on both XO’s finest, and most famous moments—returning to the bright
sounding, full orchestrated palate that he used on “Miss Misery,” “Waltz #2
(XO)” dives head-first into the deep end of his tumultuous relationship with
his mother and step-father. Set to the tempo of a fast waltz (he’s not kidding
about that part of the tile), Smith piles on the layers of
instrumentation—first the acoustic guitar, then electric, then a barroom style
piano, then the grandeur of a string section—as he references “Cathy’s Clown”
and “You’re No Good,” alludes to the sexual abuse he faced from his
step-father, and in the end, concedes with one of the album’s most enduring
lyrics—“I’m never going to know you know,
but I’m going to love you anyhow.”
One of XO’s finest
moments, or at least its most haunting, is not so much an inverse of “Waltz
#2,” but it, too, is a waltz—aptly titled “Waltz #1” with nothing parenthetical
included. Sequenced after the halfway mark on the record, it opens up side two
if you’re listening to XO on LP—and I
truthfully couldn’t think of a better way to open up the latter half of the
album.
A swirling and dreamy blend of vibraphone (courtesy of
collaborator Jon Brion, whose kaleidoscopic, whimsical aesthetic had a huge
impact on Smith’s Dreamworks-era sound) electric guitar, piano, minor
percussion, and lush strings, “Waltz #1” is a slow, sad waltz—with Smith’s
fragmented, vivid lyrics rising and falling with the music, as he paints a
picture of his inability to cease rumination on a failed relationship. The
instrumentation, as well as the sheer anguish in Smith’s voice, works together
to create what is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive and captivating
tracks on XO, as well as in Smith’s
canon—and it’s home to what is one of the album’s most brutal lyrics: “Now I never leave my zone, we’re both alone,
I’m going home—I wish I’d never seen
your face.” The way he holds, and allows his voice to both break and stop
for breaths on “face,” is almost just
too much—it’s too devastating to hear, but you also never want it to end.
The other high water mark on XO arrives at the very end—serving as a sort of epilogue or
afterward to the vitriol of “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands,” the
mesmerizing, “I Didn’t Understand,” finds Smith, whether he knew it or not at
the time, flexing his arranging and vocal prowess. “I Didn’t Understand” is
barely over two minutes in length, but the rollercoaster of emotions that Smith
manages to pack into those two minutes is astounding. An a capella track,
structured around Smith’s multi-tracked and layered voice, wordlessly singing
the melody, he then later overlays himself quietly delivering the song’s devastating
lyrics.
Originally called “Watch The World Collide,” and written
with a slightly different set of lyrics, here, in the final iteration, he
ruminates on what appears to be the aftermath of a messy, messy break up—
“…And so you’d soon be
leaving me alone, like I’m supposed to be tonight, tomorrow, and everyday.
There’s nothing here that you’ll miss, I can guarantee you this—Is a cloud of
smoke trying to occupy space? What a fucking joke…I waited for a bus to
separate the both of us, and take me off, far away from you. ‘Cause my feelings
never change a bit—I always feel like shit. I don’t know why, I guess that I
‘just do.’”
It’s a bit audacious to conclude XO with something so emotionally raw, yet arranged so beautifully
and labored over; and following the bombastic way that “Everybody Cares” ends,
it, by comparison, seems a little understated—though it really isn’t.
There are some parts of XO
that never really worked, or didn’t work as well. The more ‘rock’ oriented
songs are the weakest parts—the trudging “Amity” is a song that I always skip
over—and it’s a shame it arrives right after the beauty and pain of “Waltz #1.”
And songs “Bled White” and “Bottle Up and Explode!” are pretty similar in
structure, or at least tone, if you think about it—they are both jaunty and
excited, anchored by catchy refrains.
It isn’t a perfect album—it wasn’t 20 years ago, and it’s
not today. I’ve never felt that it was, and in truth, both XO and its predecessor, Figure
8, were the albums that took me the longest to warm up to, based on the
sharp contrast in production aesthetics when compared to the lo-fi, indie folk
trappings of his Kill Rock Stars beginnings.
It’s a bit surreal to think about how I am older now than
Smith was when he passed away in 2003; it’s also surreal to think about how
fast his descent came following the release of XO.
After working on Figure
8, Smith, according to his Wikipedia entry, became addicted to heroin, and
his self-destructive behavior began to spiral out of control. He became paranoid,
believing a white van was following him around, and when heading to the
recording studio to begin work on his next album, he asked to be dropped off
miles away, where he would traverse through brush and cliffs to get there. He
also believed people from Dreamworks were out to get him, stealing laptop
computers from his home.
In 2001, he began working with longtime collaborator Jon
Brion, but when Brion confronted Smith about his condition, the two had a
falling out; Brion sent Dreamworks a bill for his time, and the label tried to
figure out what to do with their tortured, drug addled artist who was,
apparently, using $1,500 worth of heroin and crack a day, often threatening
suicide, and actively trying to overdose.
In 2002, Smith played some very ill-fated concerts where he
could barely keep it together on stage—forgetting words and unable to play his
guitar. A review of one of these shows from an online publication stated they
wouldn’t be surprised if Smith was dead within a year; the sad thing is, is
that he was, but not from substance abuse. In 2003, Smith miraculously cleaned
up, began working slowly on From a
Basement on the Hill, and played a handful of well received ‘comeback’
shows.
On October 21st, 2003, only a tumultuous five
years after the release of XO, Smith
was found with stab wounds—and later died at the hospital. His girlfriend at
the time, Jennifer Chiba, was in the house when it happened, though in the
shower—coming out of the bathroom after hearing him scream. Reported as a
suicide, there’s always been a lingering question over the last 15 years if
that really was the case.
Like so many other moderately distressed singer/songwriters
before him, Elliott Smith has become a ‘legacy’ artist—he released his first
solo album, Roman Candle, in 1994,
and his final studio album, From a
Basement on the Hill was issued posthumously in October of 2004. He’s been
deceased for longer than he was an active recording artist—yet his music, and
what it means to others, lives on.
His self-titled album, and Either/Or, may be easier to access, and may be more direct, for
those looking for the kind of ‘wounded heart on sleeve,’ visceral yet delicate
indie folk that is often associated with Elliott Smith—however, if you look at
those first three albums as being recorded in black and white, the importance
of his colorized catalog shouldn’t be overlooked. There are some really
poignant, shattering moments on XO—many
of them are just dressed up thanks to a major label budget.
XO isn’t Smith’s
crowning achievement, though it comes pretty close, and it shows how a
moderately humble songwriter can find the places where stark honesty fits on a
gigantic musical canvas, and still make those songs resonate deeply.
As a bit of a Post Script—in 2007, Kill Rock Stars cancelled
plans for a 10th anniversary reissue of Either/Or, and a number of unreleased songs from those sessions
wound up on the double LP, New Moon—an
uneven at times, though fulfilling, collection of odds and ends from Smith’s
short career. For Smith’s 40th birthday, the label digitally issued
a small handful of alternate takes of songs from Either/Or, so that, in 2017, when the album celebrated it’s 20th anniversary, they had little ‘bonus material’ to choose from for the reissue
they assembled.
There are a number of well-known and widely bootlegged
alternate versions of the songs from the XO
sessions, but to my knowledge, Universal Music, the company that absorbed
Dreamworks, has no plans to reissue this album in celebration of its 20th
anniversary. Originally released on vinyl in 1998 by independent label Bong
Load, XO has been repressed a number
of times, all to what could be called diminishing returns—in 2012, it was
issued by ‘Plain Recordings,’ a notorious imprint known for its poor quality
pressings; in 2016, Bong Load reissued it on colored vinyl; and in 2017, Geffen
repressed it, this time with a Parental Advisory graphic on the front cover to
alert people to the small amount of profanity found within.
I bought the Plain Recordings repressing without knowing
about the quality issues, and while it sounds a little flat in the way it was
mastered, it’s not nearly as unlistenable as some audiophiles on Discogs claim
it is, though I will agree that XO is
the kind of important record that deserves a real remastering and reissuing.
Whatever version you happen to find—the CD, mp3s from iTunes, a vinyl
repressing of questionable quality—its an important album representing a time
of drastic change and growth in an artist’s career.
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