Elliott Smith's XO (7 page)

The use of plural “pictures” and the singular “it” makes it clear that it is not the pictures themselves that Smith can no longer see; as in “Sweet Adeline,” pictures cannot fully stand in for that which they
represent. Here, once again, the future—in which the picture threatens to fade—is figured as dangerous and threatening, combated as in “Tomorrow, Tomorrow” by the negation of the present. (That fear of the future is itself predicated upon a need to preserve the past, even as a memento of the past fails to capture its subject.) “Climbing hour upon hour through a total bore” is a great example of Smith’s tendency to spatialize emotional conceits, and of his lyrical precision: to bore is the opposite of to climb.

As with “Pitseleh,” “Oh Well, Okay” is host to an instrumental solo that subtly but powerfully refigures its vocal melody. In this case, it is a hazy slide guitar solo, which injects a physically palpable pause into the vocal melody Smith sings as “always turned away” and “see it anymore.” One of Smith’s greatest talents as an instrumentalist was his ability to write guitar parts that seem to
breathe;
unencumbered by words, Smith’s guitar transforms the melody of “Oh Well, Okay” into the heavy sigh of its title.

Though Heatmiser recorded numerous times at pro studios in Portland, an early version of “Bottle Up and Explode!” is among the first of Smith’s solo songs to be tracked in a professional recording environment, the
product of a session with Greg Di Gesu at Waterfront Studios in Hoboken, New Jersey on March 25 and 26, 1996. Di Gesu recalls how Smith carried over the methodology he developed recording at home:

[Waterfront] was a reputable studio, and I think it was different from the approaches he had been doing when he was recording at home. He was doing all the parts here too, tracking vocals, adding drums, two or three guitar tracks, bass. But I think ultimately he was still transitioning to that kind of a situation. He came out on publishing money, and we had a really really good time and a good connection together. But I think there’s a certain apprehension in the recordings, in the performance. When we worked together, he worked. He would get his guitar part, listen back, make sure everything was ok, then he’d do the second part. Keith, my assistant engineer at the time, called today, and he reminded me of some good things: he remembers that Elliott would want me to put rough mixes on cassette, and he’d put them on his Walkman. The studio sat on a river, and he’d go out there, smoke cigarettes, and listen to the stuff. It seemed like he used the methodology that he had used in the past, where he knows what worked for him. But I still think that being in a control room with a huge Trident A Range [mixing board] was very different for him.

In the version of “Bottle Up and Explode!” recorded by Di Gesu, Smith’s guitar is tuned down and—as Di Gesu
suggests—his vocal performance uncertain. The resultant recording is at once sweeter and more ominous than the version that made it onto
XO.
Ultimately, though, the decision to transpose “Bottle Up and Explode!” to a higher key suited the song well; the song of Smith’s voice edging up toward the top of his range better evokes the emotional dynamic of the song’s title.

As one of the older songs on
XO,
“Bottle Up and Explode” went through a series of interesting lyrical changes. The version recorded by Di Gesu, and concurrent live versions, demonstrate a marked difference in the song’s second verse:

She looks at him like he’s never known her—

It’s only been a year and half.

Thinking that that was a matter of fact.

Thinking that he was about to come over,

I’ve been standing up waiting for you—you never showed.

By November of 1997, the opening lyrics of the verse have been altered:

You look at him like you don’t want to know him,

But I know in the past that you have.

The opening of two concurrent lines with the words “thinking that” is the type of repetition that Smith
tended to edit out when revising his work. On the final version of
XO,
the verse has changed substantially from its original form:

You look at him like you’ve never known him,

But I know for a fact that you have.

The last time you cried who’d you think was inside?

Thinking that you were about to come over,

But I’m tired now of waiting for you—you never show.

In his review of
XO,
John Darnielle—a tremendously accomplished lyricist in his own right—eloquently described the unassuming brilliance of this verse:

One of my favorite lines in the song goes: “You look at him like you’ve never known him/But I know for a fact that you have.” It’s the line that leads off the song’s second verse, coming out of nowhere at all. The first verse had been a solitary affair uncluttered by second parties. You and I both know the sentiment behind such a line; it requires no explication. The acrid taste it leaves in your mouth speaks for itself. What’s unusual here is that since the feeling behind such a line is self-evident, its author offers no narrative detail of any kind to flesh it out for you. The song is a laundry list of words and phrases that prick at very specific emotional centers, but which add up to virtually nothing—they are like a dream of a song
rather than an actual song…. To find such painterly writing framed by the pleasant, palatable music that we find here is nothing short of alarming.

Similarly, Smith’s description of the colors “red, white, blue” is intentionally presented without narrative context. In the
Big Takeover
interview, Smith described how this line was specifically meant to trigger the listener’s imagination:

I was thinking about fireworks exploding. It could be a celebration, but then again, it could be something bad. I just try and make connections between things. I’m not so interested in telling complete stories anymore—now I like it better if the songs are like abstract movies…. The song won’t complete itself without someone activating their imagination. The music is supposed to do that. A lot of my favorite songs are ones that aren’t complete without me finishing them in my head.

Here, Smith summarizes why it can be so hard to say what exactly his songs are “about” even as, in Darnielle’s words, they “prick at very specific emotional centers.” The closing lines of “Bottle Up and Explode!”—“I’ll make it outside / I’ll get through becoming you”—operate on a similar principle; we never learn who “you” refers to, but the way Smith repeats “becoming you” over the song’s coda requires no explanation.

In a video interview for
Musician.com
, Smith describes his songwriting as follows: “I don’t really think about it in terms of language, I think about it more like shapes.” He then goes on to play “A Question Mark”; a perfect fit, seeing as the song’s spare opening notes seem to paint that very punctuation mark. In that same interview, Smith goes on to say “I’m really into chord changes. That was the thing I liked when I was a kid. So I’m not like a … I don’t make up a ‘riff really. It’s usually like … That sequence has some implied melody in it or something like that.”

“A Question Mark” proves exemplary in this respect; the chord voicings in its verse contain almost all of the song’s melodic turns, several of which actually get subsumed by a bass saxophone part in version recorded for
XO.
The decision to prominently feature the bass saxophone (and to include an unaccompanied snippet of it at the end of “Bottle up and Explode!”) makes for a substantial and welcome textural shift in the flow of XO, but obscures some of “A Question Mark” ’s innate musical logic. The instrumental demo of “A Question Mark,” recorded by Crane at Jackpot on January 13, 1998, places the horn part (played on guitar) farther back in the mix, allowing more room for the major 3rds in Smith’s nimble guitar part to sketch the song’s basic melody.

“A Question Mark” not only restates Smith’s belief in uncertainty, but also associates the illusion of certainty with “hatred.” Smith wrote many songs that suggest that, in the words of Larry Crane, “things that you think are one way … are actually another way.” “A Question Mark” is Smith’s “things that you think are one way can’t be simplified to any one way at all” song:

I’ve got a question mark

You’ve got a need to always take some shot in the dark

I don’t have to make pretend the picture I’m in is totally clear

You think that all things have a way they ought to appear

’Cause you know, you know, you know, you know

You know, I don’t, I dream

Don’t know what you mean

The end of the song’s second verse lays out the dangers of the causal mindset Smith implicitly rejects in “Pitseleh”:

You’re giving back a little hatred now to the world

’Cause it treated you bad

’Cause you couldn’t keep the great unknown from making you mad

Here, the attempt to fix meaning is seen as a vengeful act; an outlook that seems to inform Smith’s lyrics
in approach as well as content. As with many songs on
XO,
“A Question Mark” reveals much of its hand during its bridge, in which the song finally resolves to the G major chord it has been hinting at since its first notes:

Said your final word, but honesty and love could’ve kept us together

One day you’ll see it’s worth it after all

If you ever want to say you’re sorry you can give me a call

Notably, this is the only time on the record that the word “sorry” appears. Not only is Smith himself
not
the one apologizing—the apology is only invited, not offered or stated. In Smith’s lyrical world, hubristic certainty is the only thing that seems to warrant an apology, and that apology (requested somewhat playfully during the song’s most upbeat passage) doesn’t seem to count for much. Real emotional harm like that described in “Pitseleh” evades such simple solutions.

The bridge of “A Question Mark” is, as with many of Smith’s more slyly uplifting moments, philosophically optimistic even while it addresses a personal failure. The simple nihilism sometimes attributed to Smith’s work is overstated and misleading; for all of the doubt Smith directs both
inward and outward, he is not an advocate of sheer hopelessness. In Smith’s songs, people routinely fail to live up to the betterment they wish for themselves, or cannot accept the love that is offered to them. But the concepts of betterment and love are not debased, dismissed or destroyed—just difficult.

Though it didn’t surface in Smith’s live repertoire until 1997, “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” is actually one of the oldest songs on
XO,
its basic musical underpinnings dating back to Harum Scarum, a band that Smith was in with Tony Lash before the two played together in Heatmiser. (Harum Scarum had also worked on a version of “Sweet Adeline” with different lyrics.)

The subject matter that inspired the final version of “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” is well documented, and does not bear too much elaborating here. Before the recording of XO, Smith briefly stayed at a rehab center in Arizona, and was none too pleased with the people responsible for sending him there, nor with the experience itself.

Larry Crane has a distinct memory of hearing a rough mix of “Everybody Cares” and being taken
aback by how specifically pointed its lyrics were:

I went down for about a week to LA, and hung out with Tom and Rob and Elliott at Sunset Sound as sessions for
XO
were happening. And the first thing [Elliott] did was, he picked me up at the airport, and he said “here’s something we’re working on,” and he played me “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” and I thought “that’s mean.” And I knew what it was about and it was like, “ooh, wow.” And there was even a line that was slightly different, that was even more direct to the person it was about. And I was like “oh man, that’s pretty tough. You’re gonna put that on the record?”

This early mix of “Everybody Cares” has long leaked to the Internet, and indeed its lyrics do indeed allude more directly to Smith’s stay in Arizona:

Everybody cares, everybody understands—

Yes, everybody cares about you—as a matter of fact I’m sure they do.

But if you don’t act just right, they kick you in the head.

But I wouldn’t take it offensively—they’re doing it out of sympathy,

And you’re the one who’s bringing it all about.

So here I lay dreaming, looking at the brilliant sun

Raining its guiding light upon everyone

For a moment’s rest I leaned against the banister

After running upstairs again and again from a place you people, you’ve never been,

With all of Fear City’s finest following behind

Who with the greatest skill and resourcefulness, after putting me under a wrongful arrest,

Stepped me out to the desert to dry and die

Here I lay dreaming, looking at the brilliant sun

Pushing it’s guiding light upon everyone

The dream-killing doctor says to describe my dream.

But some things are for no one to know and for you, twelve-stepping cop, to not find out.

Ultimately, via what Schnapf calls a “last-minute change of heart,” Smith revised these lyrics. But Smith’s final revisions, though less narratively and geographically specific, certainly don’t dull the song’s sharp edges. As with many of Smith’s songs, “Everybody Cares” gets more emotionally pointed as it veers
away
from personal specificity. The final version of the song’s closing line: “You say you mean well, you don’t know what you mean/You fucking ought to stay the hell away from things you know nothing about” is one of the most direct and stinging on all of
XO,
encapsulating Smith’s disdain for self-serving good will and unfounded certainty alike.

Similarly, the song’s opening verse becomes more pointed in its final iteration:

Everybody cares, everybody understands—

Yes, everybody cares about you, yeah, and whether or not you want them to.

It’s a chemical embrace that kicks you in the head