There is only one artist I have ever heard who can literally reduce me to a weeping mess in just a few songs. Elliott smith came into my proverbial radar a bit late; a friend introduced me to him a year or so ago with a mix CD of his ‘best of’. I listened to it obsessively. For months it didn’t leave my CD player. Finally I decided ‘I have to see this man live’ and started searching the internet for any upcoming dates. My friend, you see, had failed to tell me that Smith was dead.

 

The news, as I read it on his biography, hit me quite hard. Surprisingly hard, actually, considering I hadn’t been aware of him for so long. Such is the heart and emotion that is poured into every one of Elliott Smith’s mournful laments, I had only known of him a few months and already his music felt like a lifelong companion to me.

 

Taking on the task of writing a review of Elliott Smith is quite daunting to me. But before my friend told me about him, I had (I’m ashamed to say) never even heard of him, and I’ve met plenty of others since who haven’t either. So if by writing this I manage to direct another lost soul towards his music, I feel I’ll have done a good thing.

 

Elliott smith songs are rather like forgotten pages of a diary or postcards unsent. They are not grand or complex in the arrangements, but it’s clear that each song, each lyric, each word has been agonized over, scribbled out and re-written until it was perfect. They’re very personal, which is why, I guess, it’s so easy for them to get under your skin.

 

I find it more difficult to listen to him these days; in the beginning, for those first few months he was just a brilliant lyricist and talented artist, but how he’s a lost brilliant lyricist and talented artist. The tragedy of his death is something I find hard to deal with still, after all this time, but maybe that’s just me. The real tragedy would be to think that anybody would go their entire life without ever coming into contact with any of the little slices of tarnished gold that are his songs.

Sam xxxx

http://www.myspace.com/elliottsmithnewmoon  


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