Figure 8

About

Success hadn’t been easy for Elliott Smith: What had begun as a casual self-recording project had, in just five year, turned Smith into the sad-eyed singer-songwriter wearing the white suit at the Oscar, and hobnobbing with Celine Dion and Jack Nicholson. But there were also breakup, addiction, intervention, and accidents that may have been suicide attempts—all real-life manifestations of the darkness in Smith’s songs that, in turn, drove <i>more</i> dark song. All of which were no doubt weighing on the singer as he began work on his second major-label album. Released in 2000, just three years before Smith’s death, <i>Figure 8</i> is a complicated collection, an album that captures the singer’s contradictory feelings about his past and present, as well as his encyclopedic enthusiasm for rock’s glory day. It’s an album in which a lightly sparkling tune like “L.A.”—an ode to stepping back from the brink of the abyss and stepping into sunshine—can sit right next to the tender and heartbreaking “Everything Means Nothing to Me” (Smith sculpted that song’s crystalline structure at a piano as blood dripped down his arm; he’d just carved the word “NOW” into his skin, to protest his record label’s worries about his future). That sort of emotional back-and-forth can be found throughout <i>Figure 8</i>: The wry self-loathing of “Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud?” is followed by the grim persistence of “Color Bar,” and the future ache of “Better Be Quiet Now” is featured alongside the defeated “Can’t Make a Sound.” .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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