Elliott Smith's XO

XO

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We … aren’t naive enough to think that we’re your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way … watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, you’d do well to check out Continuum’s “33 1/3” series of books—
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see the back of this book.

Matthew LeMay

2010

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
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The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
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Copyright © 2009 by Matthew LeMay

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers or their agents.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LeMay, Matthew.
XO / by Matthew LeMay.
p. cm. - (33 1/3)
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-6009-6
1. Smith, Elliott, 1969-2003. XO. I. Title. II. Series.

ML420.S668L46 2009
782.42166092-dc22

2009006651

Acknowledgments

Preface

Part One—“Making Something From Nothing”

The “Story” of
XO

XO
Song by Song

Part Two—“Pictures of Me”

Sources

Thank you Philip Fischer for your help, guidance, and insight. This book would not exist without you.

Thank you Larry Crane, Greg Di Gesu, Garrick Duckler, and Rob Schnapf for taking the time to speak with me.

And finally, thank you mom for your love and support.

Like many of his fans, I first encountered Elliott Smith when he performed “Miss Misery” at the Academy Awards ceremony on March 13, 1998. I was fourteen years old, and watching the Oscars with my parents had become a family ritual-by-default—not because of any particular interest in film, but rather because it was a rare chance for us all to share opinions on a subject where our spheres of cultural knowledge had some degree of overlap. I had never heard Elliott Smith’s music before, but the sound of his name rang a vague, elusive note of recollection; I had
heard
of this guy before, but I couldn’t place the name. As the camera focused in on a man standing uncomfortably in a white Prada suit, the significance of Smith’s name suddenly returned to me. I turned to my parents and said, “Oh, this is Elliott Smith—now he’s on the
Oscars and he’s gonna be really famous, but he used to be this homeless junky who did HEROIN!” My father, whose cynicism was nectar to my junior-high mindset, let out a forced laugh and deadpanned, “you can tell.”

I’ve listened to “Miss Misery” hundreds of times since then, and it’s come to be one of my favorite Elliott Smith songs. As pop music goes, it is fairly undeniable; a strong melody, a great structural arc, unobtrusively clever and emotionally evocative lyrics. But the song I now know and love has no resemblance to the song I remember hearing during the Academy Awards. While it took a visit to YouTube for me to remember the visual component of Smith’s performance, I have a distinct recollection of the song itself—or, rather, of a musical corollary to Smith’s sad sack reputation. I couldn’t even say where I had heard about Smith in the first place; likely a newspaper or a brief story on MTV or VH1. But my understanding of “Elliott Smith” not only colored my experience of his song—it effectively
created
a new song; a harsh, self-indulgent, and near-unlistenable ditty that lived in my memory and was almost impossible for me to shake.

It would be easy to write off my initial contact with Smith as a product of its particular time and context, or of my own immaturity. But even as I matured and
Smith’s musical vocabulary expanded, I could not seem to get past my own illusory reading of “Miss Misery.” As a musically ravenous high school student aware of Smith’s reputation as a songwriter, I purchased
XO
in 1999, but never got into the record beyond a passing interest in its first single, “Waltz #2.” I saw Smith at the Beacon Theater in 2001, and was taken aback by the professionalism and energy of his performance, but not enough so to spark any further interest in his recorded output. Later that year, I purchased Domino Records’ box set of Smith’s early work, primarily in an effort to win the affections of a girl whose AIM screen name was a combination of her given name and the letters “ESG” (“Elliott Smith Girl”). For a time, I listened obsessively to a CD by Smith’s friends and collaborators Quasi—but I still felt an insurmountable distance between myself and any music that bore the name “Elliott Smith.”

It was only when writing my band’s second record in late 2005 that I truly began to bridge that distance. As a fledgling songwriter terrified of taking my lyrics too seriously, I had been writing exclusively from some semblance of “personal experience.” But I was interested in the idea of using songs to literalize emotional observations; as a chance to say things via fictionalized characters that could never be said in person. In a conversation with a friend and bandmate, who grew
up in Portland and was very familiar with Smith’s music,
XO
came up as a record that does just that—an album that is unflinchingly harsh and emotionally direct, to the point of being difficult to listen to at times. For fear of looking stupid, I said “yeah”—we had discussed Smith’s music in the past, and I wasn’t ready to admit just how limited my interest.actually was. But the conversation intrigued me—how could Elliott Smith, the poster boy for wallowing, mopey self-loathing, make a record that is unsparing, incisive, and … mean?

With that conversation in mind, I began reevaluating Smith’s music, particularly
XO.
The ensuing process was gradual, but revelatory. Lines that had passed by suddenly stood out; characters that once seemed little more than one-dimensional projections of Smith himself were populated by fraught and contradictory emotions. The music itself grew richer and more complex, suddenly bursting with nuance, intelligence, and humor. Of
course
Smith’s music fell short and failed to connect as weepy sad bastard music—it isn’t.

When I sat down to write this book, I considered entirely omitting my dubious early impressions of Smith. But part of my fascination with Elliott Smith stems from this moment of misrecognition; from how Smith’s cultural legacy seems perpetually at odds with the nature of his music. The “story” of Elliott Smith
is that of a man with no agency; a mopey, weepy, druggy singer-songwriter plucked from coffeehouse obscurity to ambivalent semi-stardom by no effort of his own.
XO
is a work of incredible craft, intelligence, wit, and insight. In its lyrical concerns and its musical realization, it suggests that suffering does not create great art; that, instead, it leaves you “deaf and dumb and done.” Far from a tear-stained journal entry,
XO
is a fully realized work of art.

As such, this is not a book that tells the
story
of Elliott Smith, or even a book that tells the
story
of Elliott Smith making XO. Countless stories of varying merit and tact have been written that begin “Steven Paul Smith was born in 1969 …” and I’m sure countless more will be written. In the particular case of
XO
, any effort to fix the record’s meaning in Smith’s biography seems thoroughly counter to the album’s tone and mission. Telling the “real story” of Elliott Smith often serves only to emphasize his personal troubles, to place them above his craft and—given the sad and unsolved nature of his death—to cast a suspicious and dour pall over an incredible body of work.

Furthermore, telling the “real” story of a record almost invariably involves seeking out the “real” stories behind the songs, the “real” people the songs are about. Such information ostensibly exists regarding
XO,
but, as I will suggest in my analysis of the record,
the songs on
XO
tended to veer
away
from personal details as Smith refined them. Understanding
XO
does not mean understanding Smith’s personal pain—it means examining his tireless, impeccable craft.

In the first section of this book, I discuss how
XO
came to be, primarily by tracing the development of its songs. Though Smith was not given to discussing his work, he recorded more or less constantly, and many of the songs on
XO
are culminations of a fascinating sequence of demos and live performances, many of which have been widely circulated among fans. Obviously, any inferences made about the “creative process” are just that, but there are discernible trends in the development of
XO
that speak to the record’s unique strengths. Specifically, I am interested in how
XO’s
lyrical content grew bolder, more incisive, and
less
tethered to personal experience as the album’s production grew more professional and elaborate.