More than just an antidote to mainstream glitz, he implicitly proved with zinging wordplay and metaphors slipped into impossible bottles that America’s snotty elite just weren’t as brainy as they imagined, namely by virtue of being more compassionate, better informed and plain better than the lot of them. As indie rock sneered righteously behind the shadows of cynical ’80s and ’90s post-hardcore, Smith reminded that gentrified set of Albini-worshippers that screaming at society’s lesser-thans as a springboard to validate your cleverness was a dick’s move.

There are plentiful reasons to chain yourself to this particular altar, but you really need look little further than the man’s moral grounding. However, before returning to their single beds and masturbating furiously into a controversial pop culture magazine, they did seriously consider inviting her out for coffee.īut what makes Elliott Smith great encompasses both sides of the divide. The people to whom these albums most appeal reference Dave Eggers in conversation, dislike ‘hipsters’ and have probably also fancied a librarian. A crystallisation of Smith’s palatial ambition that, on final LP ‘From a Basement on the Hill’, crumbled majestically in terrifying and spectacular fashion.

A rainbow that burst forth from the rapidly clearing fug. The second trilogy, from ‘XO’ onwards, is painted in broader strokes. The people to whom these albums most appeal reference Dostoevsky in conversation, grow beards, drink mojitos alone and have at some point fancied a librarian. The kind of guy you imagine might leave his shoes on in your house, but at least he’d wipe them on the mat. This was, incidentally, the period during which Smith’s drug-intake was manageable. The first comprises ‘Roman Candle’, ‘Elliott Smith’ and ‘Either/Or’ – three difficult, solipsistic, frustrating, honest, poetic, rewarding, determinedly sad records dragged kicking and screaming from between their subject’s ears with a rusty pair of pliers and large doses of sodium pentothal. You can sort of divide Elliott Smith’s career into two distinct and similarly ace trilogies.

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