During the period from 1992 until 2003, very few who knew about Elliott Smith could accurately describe the feelings that his songs gave listeners. I have to start with a caveat: I always feel a bit queasy writing these “if you knew Elliott” pieces because to me he was much more than just an inspiration or a explanation for why I was so fucked up in the head. For the purposes of this exercise, I may have trouble just focusing on his music.

I hope you will forgive me for trying to explain this to you. I never understood what the hell he was trying to say to me (or to anyone else) until after I couldn’t say thank you to him for all the things he tried to tell me that I ignored.

Every song Elliott wrote relates an intimate story, a sweeping portrait of life on the edge of humanity, of sanity, of solace or grief, of destruction. Unlike syrup pop tales of reawakening or rebirth, Elliott was a salty dog whose great gift was in how he could take the most gorgeous melody lines and intentionally pollute the stream with the language of his unresolved anxiety. This oxymora came about through a gradual decline in his own creative wellspring for any number of reasons. I don’t want to go there: the minutiae of his life and tragic death in 2003 have been bandied about like a secret whisper among indie rock’s glitterati, the Hollywood kids, through every sidewalk cafe and coffee shop from Williamsburg to the Lower East Side, and around the world to far-away places.

Elliott, I once heard, was fearful that if he were to die that people would be sad for about six months and then they would just forget about him. For all of his critical success, it is hard to imagine that Elliott ever really connected with the impact that his music has had and continues to have on so many thousands of people.

All these years later, Elliott is far from forgotten. Now, thanks to Kill Rock Stars and Larry Crane, owner of Tape Op Magazine and Jackpot! Recording Studios (where Elliott recorded so much material through the years), a batch of unreleased recordings are being released as a double CD called New Moon. Take a listen to this song, and let it do the talking for me. I’ve already said more than I probably should.

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Download “High Times” (mp3)
from “New Moon”
by Elliott Smith
Kill Rock Stars

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