The biggest mistake people make is assuming his songs are all confessional. His name alone has become shorthand for adolescent angst and while Either/Or is suffused with melancholy, it doesn’t revel in it.Īs his longtime friend and creative collaborator Larry Crane told Pitchfork, “His lyrics are parables and observations. It’s almost impossible now to separate Smith’s tragic death and the perceptions that people project onto his music. That explains much of why the album triggers such a Proustian response, just hearing it transports you back to your emotional state when heard it for the first time. His lyrics are emotionally vulnerable in a way like reading someone’s diary. Like all of Smith’s music, Either/Or is shared and experienced on a deeply personal level, like a secret mixtape being passed around.Įither/Or comforts like a sonic blanket for when you want to tunnel into your own emotions with cathartic contentment.

The product of basement recordings, it was his first release since leaving his alt-rock band Heatmiser to fully go solo and make the kind of intimate, folk-pop that seduced a generation. It also represents a transitional snapshot in Smith’s life, the bridge between the low-fi efforts of Roman Candle and Elliott Smith where he was a local star on the Portland scene and the record that would thrust him into the Oscars spotlight and major labels. More than 20 years after its original release, on February 25, 1997, Either/Or stands as a devastatingly beautiful record and is widely regarded as Elliot Smith’s best work.

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