Mojo (UK)

Tinseltown in the rain

Mr Smith goes to Hollywood: the Portland singer-songwriter’s improbable 1997 breakthrou­gh is expanded and remastered.

- By Victoria Segal.

Division Street is not an uncommon American street name Ð it appears on maps of New York, Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles. ThereÕs one in Portland, too, now the location of a guest house with an ÒElliott Smith RoomÓ, paying tribute to the cityÕs singer-songwritin­g son through the medium of Victorian writing desk and queen-sized bed. On Punch And Judy, a bitter lament from his third album Either/Or, Smith mentions ÒDriving around/Up and down Division StreetÓ. He would often use mundane geography as a fixative in his songs, preserving a tang of street level reality: scoring drugs at Ò6th And PowellÓ on Needle In The Hay, generating drama on Roman CandleÕs Condor Ave, Òwalking down AlamedaÓ full of self-loathing. Division Street, though, seems especially resonant on Either/Or, a record that marked a clear fork in the road. Left: a big-fish-small-pond reputation on the Portland music scene, lowish profile, indie starvation rations. Right: an evening with Celine Dion. Famously, Smith ended up in a big white suit on a Titanic stage at the 70th Academy Awards. Director Gus Van Sant picked three of SmithÕs tracks for the soundtrack to his film Good Will Hunting, and after an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, Smith sang Miss Misery to a star-packed Shrine Auditorium. Watching the footage now, it looks like heÕs in an episode of Quantum Leap, beamed in from another time and place. Dion, whose My Heart Will Go On inevitably won, was by all reports very nice to him, but there was no doubt he was an aberration. ÒIÕm the wrong kind of person to be really big and famous,Ó he told a Dutch interviewe­r in 1998, an exchange used in 2014 documentar­y Heaven Adores You. ÒÔWhoÕs that guy,Õ you know? ÔIn the white suit with dirty hair who hasnÕt sold millions of records? What in the world is he doing here?Õ And I was wondering the same thing.Ó ItÕs clear, however, that Smith didnÕt need an out-of-body experience in front of Jack Nicholson and Burt Reynolds to question who he was. Born Steven Paul Smith, heÕd already undergone one fundamenta­l transforma­tion by changing his name, and Either/Or is a record preoccupie­d with dividing and splitting, not just romantical­ly, but psychicall­y, too. From its Kierkegaar­d-inspired title (Smith studied philosophy at college) to its cover shot Ð two Smiths, one a reflection Ð it is full of contradict­ions, clashes and the struggle to piece together the fragments. On the alcoholic salvation-seeking of Between The Bars, Smith sings about ÒPeople youÕve been before/That you donÕt want around any moreÓ, a telling chorus in every way. Recording engineer Larry Crane, owner of PortlandÕs Jackpot! Studios and Smith archivist since the singerÕs death in 2003, has remastered the LP, and itÕs newly striking how such beautiful music, tinted with rich pop shadings absent from his early, starker work, serves such bleak lyrics. SmithÕs interest in people holding themselves together is most obvious in harrowing night-time crisis 2.45am: ÒYou beat it in me that part of you/But IÕm going to split us back in two,Ó sings Smith, before drums swing a series of punches, a controlled explosion of defiance that shudders on brink of something uglier. These cracks show throughout Either/Or. ÒIÕm damaged bad at best,Ó sings Smith on Say Yes, a love song that closes the record with such pure, ineffable hope that itÕs hard not to be terrified by its vulnerabil­ity. The record was pieced together in studios, bedrooms, friendsÕ houses, a transient, fragile creation. Yet the musical and lyrical strength of these songs runs deep. Pictures Of Me Ð another song about possibly drug-fuelled disassocia­tion Ð is held together with brilliant Beatles glue, including a horribly ironic post-Cobain appropriat­ion of Getting Better: ÒEverybody­Õs dying just to get the disease.Ó The landscape these songs move through is specific, vivid, often nightmaris­h: black cathedral windows looming over the addiction imagery of Speed Trials, the cracked sidewalk in Alameda, the Òdog in a choke-chain collarÓ that rears up from the self-loathing Rose Parade, a song about being alone in a crowd, at a 45-degree tilt from everyone elseÕs reality. The Nirvana-like Some Song, included here in five fine live tracks from OlympiaÕs Yo Yo A Go Go festival in 1997, charts more wretched, inevitable co-ordinates: ÒBetter call your mom/SheÕs out looking for you/In the jail and the army and the hospital too.Ó Meanwhile, Alameda is testament to SmithÕs superb phrasing and timing, the second verse crowding out the first chorus. It sounds like someone trying to quash dark thoughts before they take hold (ÒNobody broke your heart/ You broke your own Õcos you canÕt finish what you startÓ), by keeping moving, walking. By the end, itÕs stopped working. Since his death in 2003, itÕs been hard to play SmithÕs music, not least because it feels wrong Ð if tempting Ð to listen out for sad foreshadow­ing and dire prophecy. Despite the misery they describe, though, these songs are remarkably warm and alive, their humanity burning through even Ð or especially, perhaps Ð at their bleakest. Letting them petrify into a series of little memorial plaques does nobody any favours, all the more reason to revel in this reissue. Among the extra tracks here is a version of XOÕs Bottle Up And Explode! with different lyrics, evidence of SmithÕs prolific creativity, a live version of Pictures Of Me (complete with heartbreak­ingly sweet on-stage message to his sister), and the intricate porch melancholi­a of I Figured You Out, a wonder anyone else would have clutched jealously to themselves but one he gave to touring partner Mary Lou Lord. For some, Either/Or is the breaking point, the moment the undergroun­d treasure was pitched overground and was never the same again. What would have happened if the mainstream had never borrowed Elliott Smith for one strange night is the stuff of speculativ­e fiction. What matters now is that these songs, divided, cracked, wholly beautiful, deserved to be heard from any stage, and still do.

 ??  ?? “SMITH ENDED UP IN A BIG WHITE SUIT ON A TITANIC STAGE AT THE 70th ACADEMY AWARDS. IT LOOKS LIKE HE’S IN AN EPISODE OF QUANTUM LEAP.”
“SMITH ENDED UP IN A BIG WHITE SUIT ON A TITANIC STAGE AT THE 70th ACADEMY AWARDS. IT LOOKS LIKE HE’S IN AN EPISODE OF QUANTUM LEAP.”

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