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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Elliott Smith talks about sincerity, happiness and the pitfalls of trying to be a perpetual winner.
May 1, 2000 | Elliott Smith is not depressed. He is not feeling grim or dissatisfied or angry or filled with a nameless ennui. His is, in his quiet, steady way, actually quite happy.
After his hit "Ms. Misery" (from the "Good Will Hunting" soundtrack) was nominated for an Academy Award, Smith was tossed without warning into the rough seas of celebrity, where he floated, vaguely bewildered at first and gasping a bit for air. Amid the bloated pomp-and-circumstance of the Oscars, Smith wandered onto the stage with a perplexed smile, a clean white suit and an acoustic guitar. In the shadow of a sprawling and monstrous set, he sang with a quiet intensity that managed to silence a roomful of people more adept at speaking than listening. The Oscar, of course, went to Celine Dion, but that beautiful moment won a new audience for Smith's unique and gorgeous sound.
Now with the release of his newest album, "Figure Eight" (his second on DreamWorks), Smith has no need of a blinding spotlight courtesy of the academy. Full of catchy hooks and bittersweet choruses, his songs have entered the well-tread realm of pop, but the vulnerability of his distinctive voice still comes through the layers of sound as clearly as it did in his lo-fi past. Smith has, almost despite himself, become one of those rare stars you root for simply because they have shown you a bit of their soul.
You've lived in Nebraska, Texas, Oregon, New York and now Los Angeles. Do you think that these landscapes have integrated themselves into your music and lent themselves to the way your music sounds and feels?
I think they must have some. But honestly, in a way, it's kind of unknown to me. I only know what I'm talking about less than half the time when I'm making something up. It's kind of like writing down a dream I had last night. It's only after a while that I can get ideas of what, if anything, a song is about. I don't know. Sometimes things pop up that seem like New York, sometimes things pop up that feel like Portland [Ore.], where I also lived. On the new album there's even a song called "L.A.," so it must have something to do with it.
Do you feel like you really need time and a certain amount of distance and objectivity in order to fully understand what you write?
Definitely. In a year I'll have a much clearer idea of whether I even like this record or not. It doesn't seem to help to police yourself too much when you're making something. To be constantly thinking, Is this good or bad? It's better for me to just do a bunch of stuff and then see if I like any of it later.
That seems a very honest, sort of "gut instinct" way to write. Where it's coming from a place in you and you don't try to censor it. Do you feel if there's too much analysis, it loses something?
It becomes sort of strategy. You begin to present some picture of yourself. There's a part of songs that are always personal, but I'm not particularly interested in concocting some picture of myself.
What are you interested in your songs doing, ideally?
I just like it better when the songs seem like little movies, maybe not even coherent ones, but sometimes they can be pretty direct. Lately, I like them if they're not even very storylike and if they are just more descriptive of some situation. I want them to create a situation or a mood where you or I can add our imagination and it would have some room to move around and see what's going on in the song. It doesn't matter very much whether it's something about me or about some imaginary character. It's a combination of feelings about things. I don't cannibalize my friends to make songs. There's a part of it all that has to do with me, but it's more like I'm an actor in some of the little movies, but not all of them.
Well, I think your music has an honesty that makes some people uncomfortable. I think there's a tendency for artists to hide behind irony, which is not something that you do.
Nobody wants to be pinned down and commit to somebody's interpretation of them. Oftentimes people are doing lyrics, but there is so much irony involved that it makes the whole thing so slippery I can't really feel anything in connection to it. There's certainly a place for irony, but it seems like it's really moved up the priority list for a lot of people and it's not one of my favorite parts of music. I'm not really into seeing a jokey band or a particularly ironic one. Just because something is witty and ironic doesn't mean it's necessarily good any more than something being a sickly sweet confessional makes it any good either. That sort of contrived personality doesn't work either way.
