elliott smith

[cine]

iTunes: If It's Got Audio, We've Got It.

[kassius]

didnt see him on here.  but he is certainly one of my favorite artists right now.

Damn straight...

When Elliot Smith died
Murder with no alibi
Wild hotel ride
LA suicide
Stabbed himself with a sword they say
But lately he's been sounding good anyway
Sometimes it takes a little blood maybe
But for whatever reason
I've been listening to Elliot Smith

Seems like a lot of times
When a man turns to suicide
His fame'll spread far and wide
Like when Van Gogh or Kurt Cobain died
And you can even include James Dean I guess
Though his death was an accident, more or less
But for whatever reason you didn't hear much
About the death of Elliot Smith

Yeah but I got reasons to hang about
Wanna see how the Kobe thing comes out
I've never seen an Australian moon
I got tickets for the Giants in San Francisco this June
My van's been running pretty well
Every Sunday there's a new king of the Hill
I wanna prove that Bush and Bin Laden are in cahoots
Iowa beat Florida in the Outback Bowl which should help with recruits
I learned how to make tortilla chips and my bike has new gears
Churchill never held office 'til his 60th year
And mostly you just never know who with
Or where you're gonna find your bliss
Maybe today your gift
Is listening to Elliot Smith

Well if fame and fortune ain’t the bride
Don't go along with suicide
If all the tears so quickly dried
When Elliot Smith died
Well I guess there's less reason than you think
For mixing pills, depression, and drink
If death and greatness has no link
Well too bad--
Too bad about Elliot Smith

[tpfkabi]

this sheds some interesting light.......

http://www.sfbg.com/39/02/art_music_elliott_smith.html

[Ghostboy]

The last of my brief Thanksgiving morning musically related posts concerns this fine, fine final album from a great musician. I'm hesitant to call it his best work yet...but actually, I think it is. Maybe it's knowing his fate that makes it so moving, but I think this is the most tears-inducing album I've heard in ages. The opening measures of Twilight put a lump in my throat almost instantly.

[Film Student]

agreed, ghostboy.

The most difficult moments for me on the album are "Strung Out Again" and "King's Crossing", the former a hopeless portrait of Smith's own view of himself ("just looking in the mirror will make you a brave man/ I know my place/ I hate my face/ I know how I begin and how I'll end/ Strung Out Again"), while on the latter Smith first says "I can't prepare for death any more than I already have", then follows that with maybe his most explicit image yet of heroin abuse ("It's Christmas time and the needle's on the tree, a skinny Santa is bringin' somethin' to me"... then "but I don't care if I fuck up, I'm going on a date with a rich white lady, ain't life great?").  

Overall, the album just seems a lot more exuberant and emotional than his previous releases.  One minute he's a melancholic romantic desperate to get lost, the next a depressed junkie with nothing to lose, the next a knight in shining armor saving a girl from tyrannical parents, the next an angry cuckold, etc.  

This is my personal favorite of his, with Either/Or and XO in a close second.

[modage]

elliott smith is/was one of my favorite artists but i find this to be maybe his weakest album.  the main reason for me is that it sounds like a work in progress.  which it is, and i'm glad to have the album in its unfinished/truncated form rather than nothing at all, BUT it makes me sadder at how great it could've been had he finished it.  i've had most of these songs in their raw live acoustic form forever and when i heard them on the album, they just didnt seem like they were finished.  i dont know how else to say it.  there are moments of beauty, and it is still one of my favorite records of the year, but it is perhaps his most depressing/bleak album and most inconsistent.  

there a huge article on him in the new SPIN with u2 on the cover and i just read it.  its horribly depressing.

[Redlum]

I love the bit in Kings crossing just before the "rich white lady" bit, which goes "open your parachute and grab your gun/falling down like an omen, a setting sun/read the part where we turn out fine/its a hell of a role if you can keep it alive".

Anyway. There are some very cool live videos on http://www.elliottsmith.com/ , now

[Reinhold]

i listened to my entire elliott smith library last night. and again today. good stuff.

[modage]

are you trying to get back in my good graces?  

[Figure 8]

i listened to my entire elliott smith library last night. and again today. good stuff.

Which ones does that include?

And man, going back now seeing this thread, reading some of these posts, it's really, really depressing.

[modage]

Nearly Two Dozen Unreleased Elliott Smith Songs Leaked Online
Source: MTV 10.14.2005 5:48 PM EDT

Just a week shy of the second anniversary of Elliott Smith's death, a bounty of unreleased material — including tracks from the sessions for the singer/songwriter's final LP, From a Basement on the Hill — has leaked online.

The 22 tracks are being circulated under the title From a Basement on the Hill II and are purported to be songs dropped from the LP. However, much of the material is believed to date from long before the album's sessions, some of it going back as far as the mid-'90s. Charlie Ramirez, Webmaster for the official Smith site SweetAdeline.net, says, "I think some of them might have been considered for Basement, but not necessarily."

Smith died from an apparent suicide on October 21, 2003 ("Singer/Songwriter Elliott Smith Dead; Friends, Fellow Musicians Pay Tribute").

Originally conceived as a double album, Basement was ultimately released in October 2004 as a single 15-track LP ("Elliott Smith's Final Album Due In October"). According to a publicist for Smith, 34 songs were recorded during the album's lengthy sessions, although various interviews and accounts put the figure closer to 50 tracks.

Ascertaining an exact number may not be possible, since Smith began recording the album in 2001 and its sessions spanned a troubled period for the singer, during which he descended into drug abuse and virtually disappeared from the music world before recovering. He was tweaking and recording songs for the album right up until his death.

According to Ramirez, tracks that are definitely outtakes from Basement sessions include "Abused," "The Worst Part Is Almost Over" and possibly "High Times," "New Disaster" and "Riot Coming." Other leaked tracks like "Placeholder," "See My City Dead" and "Georgia" date from the Either/Or era (1996-97). Much of the leaked material is in Smith's traditional folk mode, though "Abused" explodes suddenly with rockist tendencies and features the lyric "You feel bruised now/ Body and mind/ You feel used now almost all of the time."

Basement was originally to be produced by Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, Kanye West), who played on both X/O and 2000's Figure 8. But according to Benjamin Nugent's 2004 unauthorized biography, "Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing," the sessions ground to a halt when Brion could no longer tolerate Smith's spiraling drug abuse. Smith himself alluded to this in his last interview, which appeared in the Los Angeles-based magazine Under the Radar, where he said the early Basement sessions had been scrapped because of a botched friendship.

While Smith's family asked longtime producer Rob Schnapf and Smith's ex-girlfriend Joanna Bolme to put together the final version of Basement, producer Dave McConnell — who recorded more than half of the songs that appeared on the released album — said he was disappointed that he wasn't asked to participate. He said he'd kept "about three years' worth of notes" regarding Smith's plans for the material's mixing and presentation, but was never asked for them. He notes that "Ostrich & Chirping," a whimsical instrumental that appears on the album, was actually performed by him, not Smith, and was probably not meant for inclusion on the record.

"I think it was one of those situations where the family was so sad and taken down by the loss of their son that I think they wanted to work with somebody they knew," McConnell said, referring to Schnapf and Bolme. "Somebody that would be there emotionally as well as doing the work ... and I can't say I blame them, really."

According to McConnell and Nugent, three songs were removed from the proposed final version of From a Basement on the Hill at the family's behest, presumably for their lyrical content: "Abused," "Suicide Machine" and another track.

In response to the inevitable question about how Smith might have felt about the released version of Basement, McConnell said, "I think maybe after a long fight and kicking and screaming for a few weeks, he might have acquiesced. I don't think he would have delivered [that] record. The record he would have delivered would had more songs, would have had different mixes and [been] a little more in your face."

The number of reported Basement outtakes extends into double digits and includes still-unreleased songs like the rocking "Mr. Good Morning," the intimate "From a Poisoned Well," "Dancing on the Highway," the driving instrumental "See You in Heaven" and "True Love," a track McConnell said was recorded with Brion.

Smith's material has been in the headlines quite frequently in recent months. His covers of Big Star's "Thirteen" and Cat Stevens' "Trouble" — the latter is believed to be one of the last songs he completed before his death — were released on the "Thumbsucker" soundtrack (see "Elliott Smith, Polyphonics Bring Balance To 'Thumbsucker' Soundtrack"), and pianist Christopher O'Riley is recording an album of Smith songs.

Additionally, a tribute album called To: Elliott From: Portland due in February, was recently announced and features Smith covers by Portland, Oregon-based artists including the Decemberists, the Thermals, Swords, the Helio Sequence, Eric Matthews and Sean Croghan.

Croghan covers "High Times," a song that, up until the recent leak, few people had ever heard. "After Elliott died, I spent a lot of time listening to these tapes he had given me of various recordings he made at home," Croghan says in the album's liner notes. " 'High Times' hit me like a brick in the face." Matthews' performance is based on the original arrangement of "Needle in the Hay" (which he played on), which included horns, harmonica and drums before Smith scaled it down to the voice-and-guitar version on his self-titled sophomore disc.

At press time, a spokesperson for Smith's estate had no comment about the leaked tracks.

Unreleased - 22 tracks

get it quickly here:

http://s63.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=280N3V6P8NOHZ2QCCBS4JH1U4A

or here:

http://www.filefarmer.com/raindog/elliott/basement2/

or here:

http://www.elliottsmithbsides.com/BasementIIDemos.htm

[Figure 8]

Thank you so much.

[JG]

ive been listening to this for a week.

[modage]

thanks a lot, asshole.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

ive been listening to this for a week.

Where were you a week ago on posting that, then?