Sinister: Elliott Smith

[Rachel Kramer Bussel]

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, Scott Turner wrote:

> i think Elliots has (unwillingly) become the mopey "hip cuz we're sad"
> indiekid's superhero after he did the oscars or grammys (i always get them
> confused). I mean hearing one song of his off of "either/or" is cool or
> using him as intermittent background music for a movie is cool, but
> listening to the whole album straight through I find to be really really
> boring. In that respect he's like Low and other half-ass mope bands that
> just don't have a diverse enough pallete to paint a sad painting that you
> want to look at for more than a couple of minutes.

OK, I must chime in here and say that while a lot of his songs are sad in
that way, a lot of them aren't. Also, the best thing is going to his shows
and playing "I saw Elliott smile" - he'll go a whole show with his eyes
closed and no facial expressions and then someone will make a silly
request and he'll laugh. He also covers John Lennon's "Jealous Guy," Big
Star's "Thirteen," George Harrison's "Isn't It a Pity" etc. And some of
his songs are so wonderful and I can't see how they'd be interpreted as
anything but optimistic: say yes, between the bars, etc. Honestly, if you
see him play I think your opinion may very well change. I just saw him the
past two Wednesdays and he did totally different sets and was incredible
both times. For those of you not into his solo acoustic kinda stuff, his
new album XO (which is out in the states on Aug. 25, I don't know when
it's out in England) has a different more Beatles-ish sound with lots of
cool instrumentation.

:)

Rachel

"I'm the queen of the castle when no one's around
 and I'll give you my number when my feet touch the ground" -- the weekend

"well you can't get even but you can get mad
 and it's not funny no and it's not sad  
 it's just a feeling that I've always had
 look out world I'm about to be bad"      -- Kirsty MacColl, "Bad"
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