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Elliott Smith, New Moon

by Richmond Eustis
05/09/2007

The double album is fraught with peril; the posthumous album even more so. Too often such collections end up as big sacks with musicians' mediocre (or over-engineered) leftovers tossed in loose. Sometimes there's an oddity, a nice track that didn't fit with the other tracks on an album, but usually the music is dull at best, embarrassing at worst.

Elliott Smith's New Moon is posthumous and double, but it's rarely dull and never embarrassing. The collection comprises tracks recorded between 1994 and 1997, when Smith was working on Elliott Smith and Either/Or. Much of the material is excellent - tracks that would fit on either of the albums, had Smith wanted them there.

Because of its very nature, this album is not going to take anyone by surprise. It doesn't show that Elliott Smith was hiding some kind of extended range, some hitherto unplumbed depth. Rather, New Moon's songs confirm what Smith's fans already know: that Smith was one of the most skilled singer-songwriters of his time.

There are 24 songs on New Moon, of which 21 haven't seen official release - though some of Smith's fans have probably heard them in concert. ("See You Later", "Angel in the Snow" and "Big Decision" have been released before.) There's an even more spare early version of "Miss Misery," the track that earned Smith a Grammy nomination for Good Will Hunting, and of which he later grew so sick he refused to play it. There's a terrific recording of Alex Chilton's "Thirteen," which Smith would cover in concert from time to time. There's an early version of "Pretty Mary K," which is really a completely different song from the one included on Figure 8.

Those who know Either/Or and Elliott Smith know already what New Moon sounds like. There's the guitar, and there's Smith's double-tracked voice. That's it, for the most part - though a track or two actually uses drums or a bass - and one of them even employs sleighbells. This is the time period before Smith signed with Dreamworks, and began to include lush strings and occasionally psychedelic arrangements.

There's some exceptional guitarwork on New Moon, but the point of Smith's work at this time was the bareness of the music, a sort of musical isolation that goes with the lyrics about loss and regret, anxiety and pain. In an inverse relationship, the prettier the music, the more supple the line, often the darker the content of the song becomes.

Larry Crane, a friend of Smith's and the archivist for his estate, handled the audio mixing. The studio work is extremely respectful. No one added anything to the tracks to "improve" them. Rather, Crane took existing tracks and highlighted them, making them cleaner, brighter, easier to hear. The result is a double album that blends seamlessly with this era of Smith's music.

The darkness, and sly humor of Smith's songs continue in this collection. In "New Monkey" he sings of an encounter with "the sidewalk boss" who calls Smith: "a study in black." Smith look[s] up and smile[s], a picture of dissatisfaction that he can only see as a junkie/ Though I might be straight as an arrow, he's busy shaking hands with my monkey." On perhaps the folkiest track, "Whatever (Folk Song in C)" Smith asks "If you're all done like you said you'd be/What are you doing hanging out with me?" It's also the chorus that will stick in your head.

As on the earlier albums, Smith's songs are scenes from his life in Portland, Oregon. He evokes the bar gigs where the audiences ignore the bands, the regretful musing on romantic loss, the struggle with addiction, with self-loathing and self-doubt. Kill Rock Stars recognizes the tight bond between Smith and his longtime home, and says it will donate a "significant portion" of the money from New Moon to Outside In, a Portland nonprofit dedicated to helping homeless and low-income people.

At their best, Smith's songs work their way into your deep brain structures - lines of words and music that become entangled in your synapses and won't turn you loose. And new moments of Smith's wan beauty crop up often enough to make repeated listens worthwhile.

Even on single disc albums, however, Smith's songs can blur together if one isn't listening closely. Sometimes it's just some acoustic guitar, some plaintive vocals and some lyrics that don't quite repay the effort it takes to pay suss them out. Smith's most pedestrian songs too easily become what Nick Hornby's High Fidelity antihero Rob Fleming calls: "something I can ignore." Something your self-consciously indie coffeeshop can play to keep from offending you while you wait in line for the person in front of you to figure out that he wants a cup of coffee. Something not so edgy that it will drive away the paying customers, but won't drive the counter workers insane either. There are a couple of tracks like that on New Moon.

However, unlike many posthumous albums just that make an artist's fans wish the estate had just exercised a little restraint, New Moon will remind fans what a sad thing it was when Elliott Smith died in Fall 2003. This was a man who had a lot more music in him. As it is, we make do with what Smith calls "pictures of hope and depression—anything is better than nothing."