Elliott Smith
I better be quiet now

THE REVIEW

Although I have known his music for a long time, recently I have developed a particular passion for Elliott Smith’s music. It all started with a purchase made online, quite randomly in the end, but especially from listening/watching one of his concerts on YouTube, particularly the one at the Henry Fonda Theater in 2003. Elliott Smith, for those who do not know him, is an American singer-songwriter, born in 1969 and (apparently) died by suicide in 2003, who belongs to the vast and overexposed lineage of sad singer-songwriters with a guitar (to make it clear, like Nick Drake). His strength and his limitation are given by the extreme sensitivity and sincerity of his music. By his songs and the way he performed them. In a way sometimes too subdued, uniform, and therefore boring for those who do not appreciate him enough, in a wonderfully sincere and emotional way for those who love him. Listening to his "I better be quiet now" performed during one of his last concerts, precisely the one at the Henry Fonda Theater which you can find here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R57A8naur18), shifted me heavily from the first category to the second. Elliott Smith had serious drug problems but, to quote what was said of Dylan Thomas when he died, that he was not a hardened drunk who knew how to write beautiful poetry but a great poet with a vice of alcohol, he was not a depressed drug-addict who casually knew how to write great songs but a great singer-songwriter enslaved by heroin and depression. The inability to finish the previous song, and replace it with a stuttering dialogue with the audience, trying to dodge the effects of the substances he had in his body that were taking his breath away, before starting one of the most beautiful versions available online of what is for me (at least these days) Smith’s most beautiful song (someone might say a simple waltz-like ballad reminiscent of Chopin, like many of Smith's) proves it. The sound of the guitar heavily and violently placed on the ground at the end of the song is a metaphor for his tragic death that I think doesn’t need commenting. Just as I don’t think it’s necessary to comment on what "Paradise Lost" may represent for so many lovers after a story has ended and that he managed to put into verse and music with rare delicacy (you can find it all at 1:05:40 of the concert on YouTube): If I didn’t know the difference living alone’d probably be ok It wouldn’t be lonely I got a long way to go I’m getting further away