Could be. Though, I've never really perceived a sense of sloppiness with it. If anything, I think the one fault it has is it's effort to avoid sloppiness and embrace some kind of false sense of order. I wish it was more all over the place. But that's certainly not a deal breaker, obviously. I adore the record.

You think? When I first heard it, I was really taken aback by how loose and raw everything was compared to Figure 8 and XO. But I guess, yea, some of those songs are pretty orderly. He bounces back and forth a lot on that record, from the acoustic stuff to the rock stuff. I wonder how it may have been different had he been able to mix and sequence the album himself.

God me too!

And, yeah, the songs are more raw and loose than Figure 8 and XO. I agree with that. I guess I meant the album as a whole, how it hangs together, isn't as sloppy as I want it to be. I wasn't really talking about the individual compositions or how they compare to previous efforts.

Have you ever ranked the Elliott Smith albums, Joey? If not, would you care to do it now?

I'm a figure 8 guy. That break in the middle of Son of Sam sounds pretty neat cranked through my stereo.

That songs is insanely good. Have you ever heard the acoustic version?

I saw Elliott do a solo gig at the Middle East in Cambridge in 1999 or 2000, right before the Oscars. It was a small, packed room, and it was sublime. He did that beautiful cover of Harvest Moon.

Wait, something about my dates are off. He already had done the Oscars, but Figure 8 wasn't out yet. Not sure what the deal was, if he was on tour or if it was just a one-off? But I was definitely in my freshman year of college.

1. Either/Or
2. XO
3. Basement
4. Figure 8
5. Elliott Smith
6. Roman Candle


Basement and XO are known to flip spots. And Figure 8 is really just 3B more than #4. It's difficult to rank his stuff and it always changes. Except Either/Or which consistently my favorite by him by a fair margin.

If we're counting New Moon as a proper album for ranking purposes, I'd put it after S/T and ahead of Roman Candle.

Our rankings are very similar:



I agree that Either/Or is his best by a fair margin. I'm way more apt to listen to From a Basement than Figure 8 or S/T these days, but I spent so many hours with those two (especially S/T) in the early aughts that I don't feel right about bumping it lower.

There really isn't a bad album in the bunch, man. I've had all of them ranked at #2 (except Either/Or) at one time or another. This is the ranking I've settled into and default to. But like I said, the next time I go through is catalog, I'm sure I'll move stuff around. Sometimes I think I'm burnt out on Figure 8 but then... I hear Stupidity Tries or Can't Make a Sound for the first time in forever and I fall all over that record again. Fuck, this guy was a goddamn genius. I miss him. A lot.

Elliott apparently was attempting to make his White Album, so I expect that it would have been a double album. And the sprawling, catch-all feel certainly fits. He certainly had the back catalog to make it happen. I remember reading that he was trying to pare down 50+ songs into 30 or so for Basement. Of all the archival releases (outside a catch-all box set), I'd like to get a Basement Deluxe the most.

Wasn't he also planning on it starting with Shooting Star? I think I remember he originally want it to be a double album that started all frenetic and crazy and "heavy" and then slowly "devolved" into quiet, acoustic, stripped down songs by the end. Am I remembering that correctly?

I think so, yeah. But it was a different, noisier, longer mix of shooting star than what ended up on the album. I think he was planning on including Don't Go Down from the Brion sessions as well. He had also revisited and reworked a large number of songs from his back catalog, which would have really added to the the new songs he was already working on. True Love, Stickman, Dancing on the Highway, From the Poisoned Well, See You In Heaven, et. al. could hav only enhanced the concept as a whole.

Basement was his first album that really did it for me. I loved the messy, noisy and raw aspect of it compared to the rest of his discography.
I'll probably consider Either/Or my favorite now, but Basement is special.

Oh man the outro to Stupidity Tries is just phenomenal.

This is pretty cool. I was wondering how my favorite part of the song would sound stripped down: HARMONICA!

So. Fucking. Gooooooooood.

Man... what could have been. Just sucks.