Either/Or

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The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Although Elliott's music was always largely on the (wonderfully) depressing scale, 'Either/Or', though only occasionally, actually has it's more upbeat pop moments, but every track, upbeat or otherwise, is a little work of art.

I wouldn't be surprised to discover the original stampers weren't worn out, as 1997 was a low point for vinyl, and they probably didn't press too many at the time. marked a turning point in Elliott Smith's career, his music was featured prominently in Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting soundtrack, which led to the singer suddenly becoming the Oscar-nominated center of attention. The double LP is packaged in a gatefold jacket that includes an insert of the original liner notes, a postcard of the original master tapes, and several never-before seen photos. It summed up Smith perfectly, as his biographer states "the music kept rising but the person kept falling".The one "new" song present is the wonderful pop/rock of “I Figured You Out,” a track that Smith gave to his friend Mary Lou Lord to record because it “sounds like the f*****n’ Eagles. The result is this remaster of the original plus a bonus disc of unreleased live tracks, three unreleased songs and a number of curiosities. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. His songs of loss and loneliness have the broken-poet aura of Smog or Mark Eitzel, but he offsets the gloom with a hatful of damnably catchy melodies and progressions, turning suffering into pop and making it signify. I'm just now thinking of pursuing his discography on vinyl, but wondered about the easily found remasters from a few years back.

The gently insinuating despair of Smith's work communicates volumes about the heartbreak and alienation that is the bane of 20th century boys with too much time on their hands.If I was pushed to single out just four of them personal highlights on this album, then I guess I would have to opt for Sixties-tingled 'Alameda' with it's terrific rhythm, 'Angeles', a particularly catchy tune which I believe to be about the hypocrisy surrounding the music business, the stirring 'Between the Bars', made famous in the same year of this record when it was used in the closing credits of the hit film 'Good Will Hunting', and the heart-warming, frankly adorable 'Say Yes', which fades things out beautifully.