Elliott Smith
Xo

THE REVIEW

“Xo” marked Elliott Smith's major debut in 1998, when the Portland singer-songwriter's career was at its zenith, following his Oscar nomination for “Miss Misery.”
Leaving the indie world (the previous “Either/or” had been released by Kill Rock Stars) put Elliott at a crossroads faced by many protagonists of the grunge era: how to preserve an indie ethic that translated into intimate and uncompromising music with the tentacles of the music business. However, the solution found was very successful: “Xo” is a superb work, easily blending the vivid and skewed melodies of his previous works with a series of broader and more varied sound solutions, without losing the impact of Smithian lyricism.

The fantastic opening trio composed of “Sweet Adeline,” “Tomorrow Tomorrow,” and “Waltz #2 (Xo)” dispels any doubts, where sumptuous late-Beatles arrangements (from the “Abbey Road” period) are set against crystal-clear guitar and vocal textures. It quickly becomes evident that such solutions, only in a couple of instances (“Baby Britain,” “Amity”), weigh down the songs but are generally functional to surpassing the otherwise imperfectionless Drake-Cobain blend of voice and guitar that had made the previous albums exceptional. The echoes of works like “Roman Candle” are present only in the raw ballad “Independence Day”, a rough diamond that constitutes one of the peaks of “Xo”, or in the grunge reminiscent assaults of Heatmiser's “A Question Mark” or “Bled White”.
A attention to detail also emerges, for example, in the dissonant piano that underlines the beautiful “Pitseleh”, or in the elegiac “Oh Well, Okay”. At the opposite ends are “Waltz#1”, with its Morricone-like flavor, a poignant love song animated by an incredible array of orchestral insights, and the closing “I Didn’t Understand”, a delightful a cappella madrigal that seems to have come from the grooves of “Pet Sounds”.
On a lyrical level, Elliott's lyrics largely focus on the interpersonal aspect, offering intimate glimpses that are always startling. For example, in “Waltz #2 (Xo),” when he proclaims “it’s ok, it’s alright, nothing’s wrong / tell mr. man with impossible plans to just leave me alone / in the place where I make no mistakes / in the place where I have what it takes / I’m never gonna know you now, but I’m gonna love you anyhow”. Virtually absent are the heavy drug use references that characterized his previous productions, with the exception of the sharp “Everybody cares, everybody understands”. In an orchestral crescendo reminiscent of the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” Elliott wryly comments on his dependence, with lines like “for a moment’s rest you can lean against the banister / after running upstairs again and again from wherever they came to fix you in / but always fear the city’s finest follow right behind / you got a pretty vision in your head / a pencil full of poison lead / and a sickened smile illegal in every town / so here I lay dreaming looking at the brilliant sun / raining its guiding light upon everyone”.

The usual Elliott Smith: perhaps no one in the '90s represented his demons in music so touchingly and inspirationally.