Elliot Smith
Figure 8
(hear it)

I often will hear an album as a 4-song EP followed by the rest - filler, another album, an placation of certain band-members. Figure 8 is different. Today I repeatedly found myself wondering if the CD had started over for some reason. Smith never gives up, and almost every song has something to remember. Actually "Son of Sam", the first track, might be the worst song on here.

It's frustrating though. The songs make me want to listen, but the more I listen, the more I hear the lyrics, which combine a sort of general scary/mopiness - interrupted by a few genuinely touching ideas like "Somebody that I used to Know" and "Wouldn't Mama be Proud" - with drab language. Once I took a class in teaching, in which we were told that we or maybe our students should always use "content language", meaning words which directly signify the subject, rather than merely describing around it. The lack of content language makes this a CD to listen to while eating breakfast.

Now, Elliot has some real fans - they might put forward the line in the sample above, "the general's winning the war that seemed suicidal before you came along", as contentful. It's a good line, even a great one for certain styles of music, but in the song it comes across as just another meandering poke-in-the-pen attempt to get at some meaning. There's no consistency in the approach.

On the other hand, the song, "LA", is fuckin' rocktastic.

bb, 24 Jun 08