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Confessional Modes - Elliott Smith

This week, while in some weird liminal sickness land, I’ve been thinking a lot about Elliott Smith. He came back on my radar when I was writing the musical roots blog post, and I haven’t quite been able to get him out of my head since. The line between artist and art is basically non-existent in Smith’s lyrics, and they explore his struggles with mental health and drug addiction in agonising depth. It feels rare for an artist to be so cohesive, in life and in their art, and there’s a real power in the frankness of this harmony (or disharmony). His skill as a confessional poet is supplemented by an advanced musical knowledge, with fascinating chord progressions in slightly off kilter tunings underpinning his writing. He was without a doubt a complete artist.

I was introduced to Elliott Smith after a long night stomping the streets of Brighton for Pride, as we lay there the morning after, drained of all serotonin and salt, a friend’s boyfriend put on “Between the Bars”. He was a little older, worked for Vice and seemed endlessly cool to 18 year old me as he wrote articles on Cambodian Surf-Rock. I was hooked on Elliott straight away, and over that year I played Either/Or and Figure 8 into oblivion. “Between the Bars” is Smith personifying and giving voice to his addictions, and the use of the ballad form is a kind of formal challenge. The false love and comfort displayed through this song highlights the deceptive qualities of addiction, and the lies we tell ourselves to help facilitate our vices. All of this is tied together through Smith’s singing voice, which has its own melancholy timbre, and gives life to the manifestation of his demons.

Another song that showcases both Elliott’s lyricism and his musical talent is “Tomorrow Tomorrow”. The song is worth checking out for the wild guitar passage in the middle but also for this verse:

I got static in my head
The reflected sound of everything
Tried to go to where it led
But it didn't lead to anything
The noise is coming out, and if it's not out now
I know it's just about to drown tomorrow out

We can see here how uncomfortable the speaker can feel inside his own head, full of inescapable noise. He feels lost in his own mind, unable to follow its threads to anything meaningful and reducing the information of the world to a jumbled mess. It's reminiscent, in a way, of the twisting thought processes we spoke about with “Windmills of Your Mind”. Here there is no sense of wonder though. It is almost as if the speaker is caught in a current, unable to control whether his perspective is interior or exterior, or unable to even distinguish the two. The repetition of ‘out’ in the back half of the verse really drives this feeling of entrapment home.

Eliott Smith was a complicated artist, a generational talent, and a person who powerfully rendered his inner-life for all to see. His confessional approach is an important stepping stone in the development of this poetic style into a lyrical style.