Monthly Archives: July 2010

by

Song of the Day #727: ‘Diamond Joe’ – Bob Dylan

The album that immediately followed Under the Red Sky wasn’t new material but the first three volumes of The Bootleg Series, probably the most extraordinary collection of unreleased tracks by any artist ever. The Bootleg Series is now up to its eighth volume, with each edition shedding new light on Dylan’s marvelous career.

But for now I’m limiting these Dylan Weekends to releases of new material, so I’ll skip ahead to 1992’s Good As I Been to You. This was Dylan’s first album that didn’t contain a single original song (even his self-titled debut contained two of his own tracks among a collection of covers). It was also his first album since he went electric to include only acoustic instruments.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #726: ‘A Fond Farewell’ – Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith’s sixth album was released a year after his death, cobbled together by his former producer and his former girlfriend from a batch of recordings he’d completed before committing suicide.

It’s difficult to call From a Basement On a Hill a proper Elliott Smith album because there’s no way of knowing which of these songs, if any, he would have chosen to include, and which other tracks he might have never gotten around to recording (let alone what sequence he would have chosen, what artwork, and all the rest).

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #725: ‘Son of Sam’ – Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith followed up XO two years later with 2000’s Figure 8, which would end up as his final release before his suicide.

Figure 8 was his most baroque and expansive album yet, and perhaps his most critically-acclaimed. Smith had a larger profile now, at least by the standards of an indie singer-songwriter, and he reacted to the expanding spotlight by going to wonderful new places musically.

Personally, it was quite a different story, but with Smith, who from the start projected a tortured persona, it was never clear how truly tortured he was.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #724: ‘Waltz #2 (XO)’ – Elliott Smith

A year after the success of Either/Or and his Oscars adventure, Elliott Smith signed with DreamWorks Records to release his next album, XO.

It was on this album that he began to stretch his musical ambitions, introducing horns, strings and fuller instrumentation to his typical acoustic guitar arrangements.

Opening track ‘Sweet Adeline’ showcased his new direction, starting off the way all of his songs had up to that point — with a delicate acoustic guitar track and his whispered vocals — before exploding at the halfway point into a glorious cacophony.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #723: ‘Between the Bars’ – Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith released Either/Or, his most celebrated album, in 1997. It hewed closely to his self-titled album in style and sound, but his songwriting reached a new peak.

Several songs from this album (including today’s SOTD) showed up on the soundtrack of Gus Van Sant’s film Good Will Hunting. Smith also wrote an original song titled ‘Miss Misery’ for the film and was nominated for an Oscar.

One of the most surreal moments of the ceremony had Elliott Smith dressed in a white tuxedo joining hands with Celine Dion (who had performed the theme from Titanic) to take a bow in front of tens of millions of people worldwide. He described it later as like “[walking] around on the moon for a day.”

Continue reading →