Album of the Week
Or, Misery’s delicate company
Do I have about six things on my to do list for today that I’d planned on getting around to in the noontime hour? Yes. Am I so overscheduled it’s laughable? You betcha.
Am I going to stop everything this moment, just for a moment, to gush to you about Elliot Smith’s first album and how I cannot stop listening to it this week? Oh, and how.

The self-titled album was the first of his I heard, and it’s still The Record, in my book. All rough-hewn acoustic guitar strumming—fingers slipping down strings as each song moves from chord to heartbreaking, cathartic chord, here. On later albums, I tire of his subject matter: how many fingerpointin’ heroin blame-numbers can one stomach in one sitting, even when the singer’s pointing at himself? Listening becomes like trying to remain friends with a junkie; after a matter of time, it’s up to him or her to figure it out, but you have to separate yourself.

But somehow--if it's not just teetering on the edge of huge, tacky metaphor to say so, which I think it is--this record is like the halcyon days of said-friendship: you know, when it was about something else, too. Somehow here it all coalesces into this ramshackle, controlled mess of passion: Smith’s voice low and straining up to sing these simple melodies contrasted so beautifully with his strumming.

The sun out every day lately, way up high in the cold sky, and we’re having these beautiful bright , clean-smelling evenings and driving from one place to another in town in my car, it’s all I want: the steady build of “Christian Brothers,” or the slow, crumbling convergence of those opening chords of “Clementine.” For some reason, the obvious misery here blows right by me and I’m nested for the moment, instead, inside the sheer beauty of it. The sunset, the high sky with its snakes of cirrus clouds, the green trees and this, this, this. Let’s hear it again. Gah.