Elliott Smith

Either/Or (Kill Rock Stars)
by Katy Shea

Imagine that you’re at a party in Cambridge and there’s a guy with his guitar and a portable amp sitting in the living room singing as the slumped figures around him bob their heads meaningfully and their cigarette ashes hover dangerously above the crumpled tapestries that litter the hardwood floor. You’ve consumed a fifth of Jack Daniels and as you cling to your last breath of consciousness you are muttering something about how deep this guy’s music is. This is the scenario that Elliott Smith‘s album Either/Or immediately conjures up.

Sparse arrangements with an overt focus on the heady, airily-sung lyrics which span topics ranging from disdain and disinterest in a parade turned tawdry and vulgar in the eyes of a lonely soul, to the desperation of drunken nights, to self-hatred and loneliness and ultimately to, of course, love. Not too much groundbreaking material here, and it seems unlikely that this album will spawn any huge personal epiphanies for even the most shallow of listeners. However, there are moments where the sly turn of a lyric or the presence of an interesting melodic idea crops up amidst the rampant banality and redundant musical style interrupting the flow enough to make it an almost endurable listen. Although there might be people who would like this album, I think its real purpose is to urge us to heed the caveat that the label implies, meaning that if we kill the rock stars and this is what we are left with, then we really need to reassess the direction this is taking.