#Elliott smith either or tabs how to#
#Elliott smith either or tabs serial#

As goes on, I find it harder to listen to.” Well, Neil, me too: XO‘s “Baby Britain” can be read as one long dive into the murky waters of alcoholism: From its first line (“Baby Britain feels the best floating over a sea of vodka”) to its last (“For someone half as smart, you’d be a work of art/You put yourself apart, and I can’t help until you start”), the song charts a descent into the uneasy terrain of addiction and dependency, name-checking a Beatles album ( Revolver) and applying a Fab Four 12-stringed/five-finger discount (the repeating guitar motif is almost directly lifted from “Getting Better”) to negligible effect. Perhaps Smith’s former bandmate, Heatmiser singer/guitarist Neil Gust, put it best when we both participated in a National Public Radio program commemorating the fifth anniversary of Smith’s death: “After, I start to hear Elliott using his songs to attack himself and other people as his problems with alcohol and drugs-and the way he wrestled with himself-became more and more the stuff he was writing songs about.

#Elliott smith either or tabs how to#

Not to mention DreamWorks’ vision for how to best realize it. Having heard early solo acoustic versions of the song sans its ornamentation (honky-tonk pianos, a distorted electric-guitar orchestra, bashing, up-front percussion), it’s clear that Smith was struggling to walk a fine line between the small-scale charm of his first recordings and the ambition associated with his king-sized talent.

#Elliott smith either or tabs serial#

Despite its title, the song isn’t about serial killer David Berkowitz like much of Smith’s work, it’s impressionistic, drawing together images of creativity (Hindu god Shiva) and destruction (the Shining Path) to disorienting effect. While some songs on the album benefited greatly from this treatment (“Everything Reminds Me Of Her,” “I Better Be Quiet Now”), “Son Of Sam”-the album’s second single and used to soundtrack the Tim Robbins cinematic backflop Antitrust-isn’t one of them. įigure 8, Smith’s second major-label album, was recorded, in part, at Abbey Road Studios and featured a more detailed, lush set of sonic surfaces than his sparser, early material. With Smith’s music, the distance between appreciation and affection, especially later in his career, would prove to be crucial.

Unfortunately, there’s just not all that much to love. There’s actually a lot about this song to appreciate: its clever lyrical turn (is Smith talking about his love of/need for melancholy or a woman so perpetually unhappy she’s known to him as Miss Misery?), one of his patented key changes at the bridge, an ungodly amount of sweat equity invested in it since recording an early demo at Larry Crane’s Jackpot! Studios (which can be heard in a different key and with different lyrics on 2007 compilation New Moon). But I’m not hating on “Miss Misery” just because of its relative fame. This Good Will Hunting centerpiece was the one Elliott Smith song your mom could be counted upon to know, thanks in part to his somewhat shaky appearance during the Oscars, performing the tune in an out-of-character white Prada suit and standing between Celine Dion and Trisha Yearwood to take bows afterward (an experience Smith characterized as “very strange, but it was fun to walk around on the moon for a day”). :: The Five Most Overrated Elliott Smith Songs Throughout his career, Smith recorded way more material than ever made it to the public’s ear, some of which comprises the “underrated” portion of this week’s The Over/Under. 25, 2003 the event and everything leading up to it was first published by MAGNET as a free-form essay called “The Moon Is A Lightbulb Breaking”). 17, 1994, at a long-forgotten Portland, Ore., all-ages venue called Umbra Penumbra, where Smith played a combination of acoustic Heatmiser material and some new songs that would later appear on solo debut Roman Candle) and Smith’s posthumous Portland memorial (Oct. Corey duBrowa can clearly remember two pivot points in the career of Elliott Smith: the first solo show he attended (Sept.