They Took Your Life Apart and Called Your Failures Art

22 May 07.

This is Music Related.

Pretty conflicted about this new Elliott Smith album. I haven’t bought nor listened to it yet, but I’m not full decided one way or the other.

When I heard about his passing I was sitting in college surrounded by noise and people, and it just felt like a bit of a pity but that was it. I remember my main thought being “Jesus, he wasn’t faking it.”

It wasn’t until later on, listening to his albums on lonely drives home that the weight of it really hit home; the whole catalogue rendered unbearably desperate and heartfelt by his death and the manner in which it occurred.

And now there’s a double LP of unreleased material. And it will be wonderful and it might even help people but I’m pretty sure that’s not the reason it was released. I can’t help but picture what’s happened to Jeff Buckley’s small body of work, where essentially one great album and an unfinished pile of demo tapes have been primped and pawned and repackaged and resold to a point which cannot be fair to the memory of the man. A cheap undermining of the reality of a career and life lamentably cut short. Is the same thing just beginning for Elliott Smith? Would he have wanted this released? What about the next one? It’s the only question that matters.

Comments

  1. Which one? You ended with three different questions.
    Surely the most important aspect is whether the stuff is really any good or not.

    — danny  May 23, 01:53 PM  #

  2. Don’t you think artists go into it knowing that everything they do is going to be public at some point? Whether it’s against their wishes or after they die, that’s how it’s always worked.

    I don’t know…I think the benefit to me (and everyone else) of “new” Elliott Smith music is more important than the speculated concern that he might have cared about the issue before he died.

    — Feaverish  May 23, 06:36 PM  #

  3. Danny – the middle one. I was tired.

    It’s only public in a sense, Aaron. A single company is releasing it for profit. I’d probably be way more comfortable about everything I’d done being made public property, which I guess happens eventually. And I’m probably being too sensitive. And I probably will listen to it. But I reserve the right to bring this up again for his next album. The one recorded in his bathroom after a drinking session when he was 16.

    It’s like this, right, what if someone dug up your body after you were dead and made a porno featuring it? A really good porno. Would that be cool? It’s exactly the same thing. Right?

    — Pierce  May 23, 07:34 PM  #

  4. First of all, yes, it’s exactly the same thing as the necro-porno. And secondly, no, I would have no problem with that. I’ll be dead, after all.

    — Feaverish  May 23, 08:58 PM  #

  5. Just bought the album, thanks for reminding me. Now are there any oil companies I should be investing in?

    — damh  May 24, 07:37 PM  #

  6. I think you’ve probably invested enough in the oily blackness of your heart for this week.

    — Pierce  May 25, 02:27 PM  #