Album Anniversaries: 25 Years of Elliott Smith’s Sardonic ‘Either/Or’

This record bridges the gap between Smith’s indie-folk bedroom records and his grander early ’00s productions, establishing him as a lyrical and melodic tour de force.

In Album Anniversaries, writers honor their favorite aging albums and their subsequent legacies, revealing which projects have stood the test of time.

Written by Felix Kalvesmaki

Photo courtesy of Frank Mullen

Elliott Smith seemed to operate on deception … at first. His works sounded very bare: a cheap acoustic guitar, recording gear from his girlfriend’s basement, an occasional second instrument to accompany his voice and strumming. Listening to that playing, though, it’s hard not to imagine Smith’s fingers smoking on the fretboard. His voice exhibits control and restraint, but not necessarily detachment. He tries not to drone over some plucky, hyper-complicated riff; rather, his music is intentional, in its luster or lack thereof, from start to finish. Elliott Smith isn’t a white guy with a guitar, middling about with a trust fund — he’s who all these white guys with guitars are trying and failing and failing and failing again to be. Effortlessly profound, endlessly talented and proficient with his instruments, and entirely artistically self-motivated. John Mayer couldn’t hold a roman candle to Smith.

1997 saw Either/Or, a crystallization of one of his many gifts. Its predecessor, the eponymous Elliott Smith, contains some of the best cuts of his career, and its successor, XO, gave Smith a bigger budget than he could’ve imagined, rocketing his capabilities beyond what the eight-track recorder could handle. But Either/Or, his third full-length, shows he didn’t need David Geffen’s record label to reign supreme over the indie scene.

What’s most impressive, about both this record and Smith in general, is that it’s very difficult to highlight what makes it him: unique. Spotlighting one aspect of Smith’s artistry is the quickest way to neglect everything else that brings it together. Focusing on his sleight, finger-plucked guitar (“Alameda”) or the phantom chill on his breath as he croons (“No Name No. 5”) makes it easy to miss out on the artistry of his songwriting. Concentrating too much on the lyrics and melody of it all distracts from the production, which not only adds a humility to the record, but offers a point of comparison for the three albums that follow. There’s a reason this LP is often considered the bridge between his lonely, early ’90s indie folk and his later, more ambitious efforts.

While Smith still works towards this austere, isolated aesthetic on Either/Or, only a few of its tracks feature the troubadouring that Smith became known for, alone in the booth with a guitar (“Between the Bars,” “Angeles”). Even then, these tracks aren’t underproduced — just subtly produced. Smith recorded this entire album on an eight-track: listen to it click at the beginning of “Speed Trials.” Considering such a setup, his results are immaculate. It’s easy to praise the more obvious creative details of Smith’s work, the stuff that wins him admirers, but the technical quality of his work is nothing to shrug off either.

Image courtesy of Kill Rock Stars

The rest of the record comes with varying forms of instrumentation. At times, it leads to a sunny track like “Ballad of Big Nothing,” which has the potential to misdirect people with its chorus in the same way Nine Inch Nails did with “Closer.” In the same sense that the world misread Reznor’s plea for salvation as horny filth, one might hear Smith sing, “You can do what you want to / Whenever you want to,” and wrongfully view him as a cheery nihilist. This is one way Smith plays tricks: the drums kick in seconds into the song and keep time on cruise control until the track ends. Still, Smith can play it down. The much more lowkey “Speed Trials” cruises along with nothing but cymbals and what sounds like spoons beating against pans for time-keeping purposes. The song has a rowdy feeling to it, and the new chords Smith strums when he repeats the chorus for the final time bring flowers to bloom. When all is said and done, the complexity of Smith’s music can be truly lovely in the way one might appreciate a Mozart composition.

His lyrics don’t let that warmth settle in, though. Smith’s lexicon leaves little room for relenting, especially when it comes to describing his own emotions in upsetting, bloody detail. Listening to a record of his front-to-back can feel like digging through brains, veins, lungs, and viscera. You’re getting entirely too close to something horrible, and —  oh God, it’s creeping along your skin, burrowing under your fingernails. “Between the Bars,” one of his best-known pieces, does this exceptionally cruelly. It’s an earworm in the worst way: a pessimistic larva asking, pleading, begging, screaming, crying, until it threatens you to sink lower. “Drink up one more time, and I'll make you mine / Keep you apart, deep in my heart / Separate from the rest, where I like you the best” illustrates best how spirits haunt the soul in times of unrest, but it’s a treatise on alcoholism if there ever was one. Smith takes on other subjects, of course, mainly relationships and the self. Regardless of the topic at hand, his sardonic perspective is what defines his lyricism.

Elliott Smith doesn’t come off as a cynical songwriter. His blues don’t turn the brain to parmesan cheese with its grating dramatics: Instead, it feels like Smith is sitting across from you, apprehensively showing you his gory, beating heart. So unbelievably real. Smith can wind himself back up just as easily as he comes unspooled, though. After pouring himself out to you, he can shake it off and keep going. Either/Or stands strong after its 36 minutes are over, content with how it all plays out. Smith’s closer, the candlelit “Say Yes,” leaves listeners with resounding words of advice: “Situations get f-cked up and turn around, sooner or later.”