Such complexity, an unstable blend of strength and insecurity, is key to understanding Smith’s work, and Either/Or in particular.
When he started being surrounded by fans and people who would do everything for him, he lost that need to use the part of his brain that could figure things out or be organized.” In the midst of such upheaval, he seemed to require significant care and reassurance.īut, as Bolme says in Autumn de Wilde’s book, Elliott Smith, she and her friends always saw Smith as a practical, capable man “A smart guy, not just some creative genius… He could do all sorts of other shit. Smith’s career was blooming, with a recent Oscar nomination for Best Song, a major label debut (XO) in the works, and a move from the hometown security of Portland, Oregon, to New York. At his side was his former girlfriend, Joanna Bolme, who had come along to London to look after him. With a similarly unexpected candour, he was swiftly talking off the record about how he’d been institutionalized a few months earlier. I first met Smith in spring 1998, as Either/Or was being belatedly released in the UK, and he was sweet, funny, solicitous, and not quite as shy as his increasingly formidable reputation suggested. “When they clean the street,” he sings on “Rose Parade”, “I’ll be the only shit that’s left behind.” “ Either/Or Reissue Shines New Light On Tormented Singer Elliott Smith,” read a headline on the New York Times website as the 2CD set was announced and, in fairness, it’s easy to accentuate the negative: the intimations of mortality on every album stretching back to his solo debut, 1994’s Roman Candle the fatalism intertwined with his beautiful melodies. It’s worth remembering this, nearly 14 years after Smith’s likely suicide, as a deluxe edition of his finest album looks destined to be greeted not just with acclaim, but with the full gamut of doomed poet clichés.
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