Shuffling VI

OK people, you know the drill.

Shuffle!!

1) Maybe Maybe by Pavement- This is the version from the Brighten The Corners deluxe reissue, which I think is some kind of radio station/John Peel session piss take. Somehow it's even sloppier than the original lo-fi version you can hear on the Westing (By Sextant And Musket) compilation. Anyway, this kind of song wasn't made for a full band so it doesn't come off well here.

2) The Smallest Weird Number by Boards Of Canada- This short track reminds me of how fascinating this band is even on a small scale. Though a bit over one minute long, it is perfection in microcosm, packing in all kinds of interesting textures and sounds.

3) Puttin' On The Dog by Tom Waits- Ah, one of those gin joint, roadhouse blues stomps from Tom Waits. Someday there really oughta be a movie made of Charles Bukowski's work that has songs by Waits as a soundtrack. Listening to a song like this, you feel as though you're in the dark corner of a dive bar nursing a scotch and water that you bought with the last four bucks in your wallet, wondering what you're going to do now. Then a woman walks by and makes you feel something after you assumed you couldn't anymore, and hell, you figure you have nothing to lose...

4) Shooting Star by Elliott Smith- Man, if he had actually finished From A Basement On A Hill, it would've been one weird album. It already is a helter-skelter affair in its half-finished, post-humous state, but there truly is a paranoid late 60s pop/rock atmosphere that runs through it, recalling The White Album and the unfinished-until-2004 Smile project. This six minute song proves that Smith could've really made something out of a full touring band kind of sound rather than the lonely singer/songwriter stuff he's known for or the studio perfectionist, borderline orchestral pop of Figure 8 and XO. The guitar stuff around the 3:35 mark is especially good--hell, who knew he could play like that (assuming it isn't a sessionman)??

5) Back Of Your Head by Cat Power- It's too bad (for me) that Chan Marshall is caught up in 60s soul/R&B-isms and being all happy, because her earlier work is impossibly sad and beautiful. As much as I love Nico's The Marble Index, I think that Cat Power's Moon Pix is more enjoyably dower. 'Back Of Your Head' is a lonely willow of a song, its lyrics reminding me of so many bittersweet, and simply bitter, moments in my own life and romances. Also, "you hold the big picture so well/can't you see that we're going to hell?" is a chilling summation of a relationship that always gets to me. Sniff....

Shuffling I

OK, we all know that when I post videos, they're the quickest entries to whip up for Whiskey Pie. But the real world being what it is, my time being as finite as it is--especially now that I have two jobs--I can't post intensive material every day. So rather than post nothing, I decided to just whip up a new column I can break out whenever I want to write something but am too tired/braindead to bother with something meatier.

And so, Shuffling; a new column series where I--you may have guessed it!!--put my digital music software of choice on random shuffle and talk about the first five songs that come up as I listen to them.

Apologies in advance for the rough nature of this post, but I've been away from home from roughly 7 this morning to 9 tonight and as I'm writing this I'm getting progressively drunker. Yes, this is the kind of professionalism and intelligence you demand from Whiskey Pie...
Nevermind that bit. I went back edited the post.

1) Leave Your Effects Where They're Easily Seen by Spoon: This comes from the bonus disc of random studio scribbles, experiments, and outtakes that was released with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. As such, there isn't much to talk about. It has plodding, lo fi guitar and the singer whining out something or other that I can't make out. An auspicious start indeed.

2) Gazzelloni by Eric Dolphy: I'm far from an expert on jazz, but I've got enough of an appreciation for strange things to love Out To Lunch, which is an experimental odyssey through free jazz and 'out' playing. Beyond that kind of bare description, it's an album of unique textures. If I recall correctly, there's no piano on the album at all, which is rare for an album of this period. 'Gazzelloni' will sound like random soloing and chaotic bass/drums to the uninitiated but is like sweet textural, rhythmic, and melodic honey to people like me, who don't need easily defined song structures and chords to get by. If you don't think that flute and vibraphone can be avant garde, you've never listened to this song.

3) Da Funk/Daftendirekt by Daft Punk: As an on and off fan of Phish and the Grateful Dead, I'm always excited to see bands utilize the live setting to do more than just play a straightforward set of their songs. Daft Punk, of all people, seem to have taken this directive to heart, but rather than from the angle of jazz musicians they come to it from the DJ set angle, mixing their own songs together and mashing them up in new and interesting ways. Alive 2007 is not-so-secretly one of the best live albums that's ever emerged from the electronic music field, and even if you only know Daft Punk's name because of that "one more time" song, it's a brilliant example of why this kind of music can be so addictive and euphoric. I have to confess that I don't really know either of the songs being smashed together here, but now that the shot of whiskey and half of a can of PBR are taking effect after a full day at both of my jobs (it's a long, boring story) I feel like I can relate to the rave kids of the 90s who stayed up all night dancing while rolling on ecstasy and then went into their jobs the next morning with little to no sleep. And then did it all over again the next night. On a side note, wasn't Kanye West's using a Daft Punk sample for that one hit song kind of like a modern day echo of Afrika Bambaataa using a Kraftwerk sample?? I think so.

4) Alphonse Mambo by The Mountain Goats: Huh, harmonica, eh?? This is one of the few early-ish Mountain Goats songs that doesn't sound like it was recorded into a boombox. I'm still a little underwhelmed by the last Mountain Goats album, but John Darnielle is the kind of artist who has such a huge back catalog, and continues to release new stuff, that you're never disappointed for very long. Good but not great.

5) Let's Get Lost by Elliott Smith: I don't know if we will or can ever hear From A Basement On The Hill without always thinking about his death. We'll always have that context even if we try to put it out of our heads and judge the music on its own merits. It's a decent enough album, but it still has that unmistakable feel of something that was finished after an artist's death. Kind of like how Stephen Spielberg "finished" 'A.I.' after Stanley Kubrick died. Wait, what??....The last year or so of Smith's life was a confused mess and I'm not sure we'll really know if he killed himself or was stabbed by an intruder/assassin. Whatever the case, I think the album's title is very evocative and this song's stripped down production hearkens back to his first few albums.

Album of the Week: Elliott Smith- Either/Or

Today was my day off for the week, so after sleeping in late and catching up on Internet nonsense I mailed a credit card bill and went to the library. Once I got home I decided to go for a walk and smoke a clove cigarette. Smoking is something I rarely do (I'm that fairy tale breed who can do it responsibly and not get addicted; yes, we do exist) but today it just felt right. No one else was out except for the cars driving by the exercise trail I use. While crossing a road, a truck full of high schoolers yelled something at me. I'm not sure if it was "smoker" or something more generally derogatory. Since I was listening to a podcast at the time, I don't know for sure. On the way home, the overcast late Fall day turned darker and darker as the sun went down. Then, it began to snow and I thought, this has been a kind of beautiful day, but also kind of sad. It seemed like something out of a short story, the way I was heckled anonymously and then it got darker and more winter-y. I wasn't feeling depressed today but it was a low key, introspective day nonetheless. When I listen to Elliott Smith, I think he's able to capture these kind of scenes and slices of life effortlessly. Everyone always fixates on how depressing his music was, but to me it always carries a kind of existential beauty to it. The way life is, you have to take the bitter with the sweet.

Either/Or was released before he became popular thanks to the soundtrack of Good Will Hunting, and so it captures Smith at a time in his life when he was still only known as a struggling singer/songwriter and ex-member of Heatmiser and not as the post-'Miss Misery' wonderkid. Continuing this transitional element to the album is the instrumentation which sits between the stripped down/acoustic sound of his first two albums and the full blown orchestration of XO and Figure 8. There's a drowsy afternoon/staying-up-too-late vibe to Either/Or that fits in with fellow 'slowcore' tagged bands like American Music Club and Red House Painters, who mix singer/songwriter/folk-isms with slow-to-mid-tempo rock a la the Velvet Underground's third album.

I've always found the album cover to be iconic, as if it were a visual representation of one of his songs. Smith sits in a wooden chair, leaned against a mirror. Graffiti is all over the place. Smith said in interviews that there were points in his life that were lived like the cliched 'starving artist', surviving on peanut butter and bread for weeks on end, and on this cover he looks it. Slouched slightly in the chair, his hair an indifferent mess covered by a hat, he clutches the very end of a cigarette between his fingers and looks out at you with neutral indifference, the famous tattoo of Ferdinand the Bull showing clear on his arm--a tough bull who would rather smell flowers than fight.

The reason that I and so many others love Elliott Smith and his music is the nuances and complexity they demonstrate for the human condition. They're full of depression, anger, jealously, bitterness, heartbreak, loneliness, and self-destruction, but there are equal measures of their opposites, too. We relate to these songs-as-stories but they aren't us just as they aren't Smith, either. An author puts some amount of himself in his work and lets himself feel along with the characters as the narrative develops but to lapse into auto-biography is threatening to cheapen the experience.

Either/Or is a brilliant album not because I've ever been walking down Alameda looking at the cracks in the sidewalk while thinking about my friends, but I've done similar things just as Smith undoubtedly has. Though the things we thought about were without a doubt entirely different, we still have lived that kind of story before. Maybe you've never been out for a walk like the one I took today and felt/thought about the exact things I did, but you can still relate. That is the genius of Elliott Smith and Either/Or specifically. If you're at all a fan of singer/songwriters, it's a must hear.

Album of the Week: Elliott Smith-Roman Candle

This could get awfully discursive, but Elliott Smith’s death never rang as a huge tragedy in my heart. Before the raging torrent of email pours in, let me explain.

I’ve heard all of Smith’s albums. I even read the book about him, Elliott Smith and the Ballad of Big Nothing. To be sure, I love his music and his lyrics mean a lot to me—in fact, when I get really depressed to the point that I don’t want to do anything except lay in bed, his self titled album is one of three albums I listen to to help me through, the others being Cat Power’s The Covers Record and Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. And much like Nick Drake, to whom he is so often compared it’s become a cliché even to point out how often he’s compared to him, I think Smith’s music is at its best when it is stripped down and unadorned.

This, then, is why I didn’t find Smith’s death especially affecting, because in my opinion his best and most affecting work was behind him by the time he killed himself (or, as certain fans insist, he was murdered). Say what you will about XO and Figure 8, but they don’t do it for me like his first three because they sound too big, too polished, too orchestrated, and too grasping. Certain singer/songwriter types get better as their sound gets fuller and more mannered—witness the full flowering of the talents of Sufjan Stevens and Andrew Bird on their last albums—while others seem more labored and watered down, such as Elliott Smith.

I promise I’m going somewhere with this.

Roman Candle was Smith’s first solo album, though he had been a member of the band Heatmiser for several years. The story goes that Smith recorded the album in his then-girlfriend’s house and didn’t intend to release it, but after Cavity Search Records heard it, they convinced him to. Ah, but a cursory read of Wikipedia could have told you that, so let me tell you something new: the album is not nearly as lo-fi as people make it out to be. Compare this to, say, the early recordings of the Mountain Goats and it’s a night and day difference.

I always read a lot about both Nick Drake and Elliott Smith’s lyrics and lives, but the one thing I never hear mentioned is their skill with a guitar. Granted it is not in the metal/jazz soloing mode, but their fingerpicking and unique chording style deserve special mention time and again—Drake for the still-confounding playing on Pink Moon and Smith for his frequently brilliant electric guitar work on Roman Candle as well as the Drake-esque acoustics of his self titled album.

The other problem I have with the later albums of Elliott Smith is their length. Roman Candle is a lean half hour and as such never overstays its welcome. What’s more, the songs are of consistently high quality—‘Roman Candle’ is maybe his best opening track from an album ever other than the landmark ‘Needle In The Hay’; the direct (and soon to become Smith standard) double-tracked vocals on ‘No Name #4’; even the od- man-out closing instrumental ‘Kiwi Maddog 20/20’, which has a country twang and lightening quality, is great.

I said his death didn’t affect me too greatly, which is strange because I grew up with Smith’s self titled album. No, that’s not true. The first thing I heard by him was Figure 8 and while I liked it, it didn’t mean much to me other than the relationship-style songs like ‘Somebody That I Used To Know.’ However, discovering his self titled album during the latter stages of high school gave me something to return to again and again over the years. It often played in my head while I went through formative experiences in college and afterward. So it’s hard for me to be critical about the album because it means so much to me—thus I inevitably think it’s the best thing he’s ever done, and would recommend it over Roman Candle. However, this is a brilliant album in its own right that deserves more attention. If all you know about Elliott Smith is ‘Miss Misery’ or the iconic cover to Figure 8, track this album down and find out why so many people think his early work is so essential.