the preview
Niblo’s Dad, early 1960s, South Wales
rocky votolato: the brag & cuss
The Rocky Votolato review was just posted on Seattle.net.
You can check it out here.
Filed under As a Writer..., Medium of Sound | Comment (0)elliott smith: new moon
ELLIOTT SMITH: NEW MOON
Released on Kill Rock Stars, May 2007
By Jessica Star Rockers
There have been two posthumous Elliott Smith albums. The first, From a Basement On a Hill, was released by Anti Records in 2004, a year after Smith’s death. It was the album he was working on when he died, and when it came out, I couldn’t listen to it. The songs sounded like a psychedelic suicide note; a frightened man losing control of himself and his genius. As you can guess, the years passed and Basement eventually made it to my cd player. But the aversion I had was replaced by an obsessive need to hear it all – every lyric, every chaotic overdub, every voice that seemed to come from inside Smith’s head. One of the highlights of the album happens on the song “King’s Crossing” when Smith sings, “Give me one good reason not to do it,” and the voice of his girlfriend whispers back “Because we love you.” For Elliott Smith fans like me, the album is self-indulgent catharsis. Painful, beautiful, and best to avoid unless I’m looking for a reason to have a good cry.
Which is why the May release of the double-disc New Moon, this time by Kill Rock Stars, feels like such a joyful event. The 24 songs were all recorded over a decade ago, before the fame and the heroin and the psychotropic prescription meds. It’s a shock these are considered leftovers, songs that didn’t make it on his two releases with KRS. It’s also a shock these songs were recorded so long ago. Their acoustic squeaks and pops sound more authentic and fresh than any of the singer/songwriters currently attempting the same lo-fi realism.
If Elliott Smith’s life were a movie, the release of this album would give the impression of a Hollywood ending. The genius continues on, amidst the fears and sorrows and suicide, but it remains on the playful side of drug use. What you hear on this album, which seems to be missing from Basement, is hopefulness. Despite the depression — and there’s nothing false about it — the foreshadowing isn’t of the pain that is to come. Instead, Smith sounds like he’ll make it out alive.
The last two songs on the second cd, “See You Later” and “Half Right,” are positioned perfectly. After literally singing “See you later,” Smith’s album ends with the most memorable lyric in “Half Right”: “Would you say that one of your dreams got in you and ripped out the seams? That’s what I’d say. That’s what I’d say.”
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