Elliott smith either or youtube serial#
Elliott smith either or youtube license#

Both an ambivalent eye-roll saying “I really don’t care, go on and live your life” and reassurance to yourself that you can move on and be fine as you choose to move forward without whoever it is holding you back. The song is a bittersweet kiss-off to the past, underscored by some of Smith’s finest finger-picking. It soundtracked my heartbreaks, my worries about the future, and my longing to get out of my hometown that felt increasingly suffocating. In particular, I found myself constantly hitting to back button to replay “Somebody That I Used To Know.”

Elliott smith either or youtube serial#

– a contrast of beautiful weather and people with smog and seedy underbellies off the main strips.Įven as his brightest record, he still has songs like the serial killer name-dropping “Son of Sam' or the haunting ballad “Everything Means Nothing to Me.” Because Figure 8 was always in my car, it became a soundtrack to these last years of high school and teenage malaise. And Smith seemed to revel in the aesthetics of L.A. Whether he was recording lo-fi or in glossy studios on a major label’s dime, there’s permeating loneliness throughout all of his work. Released in 2000, Figure 8 was the second album Smith recorded primarily in Los Angeles for Dreamworks Records. While my favorite Elliott Smith records veer toward the stark, blurry, heartbreak of his Portland, Oregon era records like Either/Or and his self-titled LP, Figure 8 is much more conducive to blaring from car speakers while drifting through adolescent limbo.

Elliott smith either or youtube license#

I’d just gotten my driver’s license as well and these two became a crucial pairing.

When a friend who’d recently graduated heard I was just dipping my toes into Elliott Smith, she was insistent that I take her CD copy of Figure 8. Without older siblings with record collections to sift through, I coveted these moments. In your youth, the best music is that that’s bestowed upon you by someone slightly older and infinitely cooler. I forced a smile and tried to recreate Smith’s signature pose for our disposable camera and left.ĭriving away, I thought back on the first time I remembered seeing that cover. Some fan messages could be faintly seen through the layers of messy paint. Spraypaint and wheatpaste stickers smothered the wall, the red, black, and white lines barely peeking through the chaos. While I was content to go on with whatever plans were in store, I could care less about hitting the beach or the LA nightlife – the only thing I was insistent on was making it out to Silverlake and finally seeing this sacred indie rock landmark. For an artist whose music seemed best to encapsulate longing, lonely emotions, it felt like a way to be connected through enduring, communal grief.Īt 21, my girlfriend and her roommate proposed the idea of a road trip to Los Angeles over spring break. I’d read about how it’d become a memorial, practically a holy site, where Smith fans left candles and scribbled messages and remembrances on the wall.

A swooping design of red, black, and white lines had become synonymous with Elliott Smith after he’d posed in front of it on his Figure 8 album, the last record he’d release before his death. Read or listen to the piece below.įor years, I’d dreamed of making the pilgrimage to the mural. This week, Dusty Henry looks back at Elliott Smith’s 2000 song “Somebody That Used To Know” and how it soundtracks fading memories and making peace with the passage of time. Each week in 2022, KEXP pays homage to a different year and our writers are commemorating with one song from that year that resonates with them.

As KEXP celebrates its 50th anniversary, we're looking back at the last half-century of music.