XO

About

By the late 1990, Elliott Smith’s songs about needle, narcotic, abuse, and outrage had earned him an outsized reputation as a depressed loner. Many assumed he was simply the male counterpart to the character he’d described on “Miss Misery”—the <i>Good Will Hunting</i> song that had earned Smith an Academy Award nomination. Of course, Smith was more than some solitary brooder recording <i>Roman Candle</i> at home alone: He was also a bandmate who loved to play rock ’n’ roll; a romantic who recorded in the homes of girlfriends and borrowed their instruments; and an endlessly curious musician who studied the intricacies of pop and Bach alike. Smith’s hard-earned songwriting acumen was on full display with <i>XO</i>, the 1998 major-label debut he recorded mostly in a string of Los Angeles studio, working with a tandem of successful producer, as well as a small band that played the very few parts Smith decided not to do himself. The cover of <i>XO</i>, which finds Smith happily at work as producer Rob Schnapf smiles at him behind the glass of a sound booth, serves as a counterpoint to the singer’s mopey public image: He clearly had <i>fun</i> working on building the songs on <i>XO</i>, as he turned his acoustic blueprints into something much bigger. The piano and drums that lock in halfway through “Sweet Adeline”; the rollicking saxophone that swivels inside “A Question Mark”; the ornate a cappella arrangement that guides “I Didn’t Understand”: They all affirmed that the reductive “folk” label had never fit Smith, and that he was always composing complicated pop songs that just happened to be rendered with an acoustic guitar. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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