FRANK ZAPPA - ZOOT ALLURES (1976)

For this week's post, I picked one of my favorite Zappa records and used it to try to exhaustively answer a much-pondered question: "I want to check out Frank Zappa, but I don't know where to begin. Where do I start?"

When I first decided to get into Frank Zappa, I took the logical approach and started at the beginning. Rather fittingly, however, the 'logical approach' didn't really work with Zappa: I found Freak Out! (1966) to be too rambling, psychedelic and, well, freaky for my taste, and not really fitting with the Zappa that I'd heard and been curious about(the raunchy, bluesy boogie of Chunga's Revenge (1970) and the carefree rambunctiousness of Fillmore East (1971)). My teenage self didn't really have the attention span for the mammoth undertaking of going through Zappa chronologically, anyway (the man put out sixty-two albums over a twenty-seven year career - two point three albums a year, on average - and that's not counting the posthumous compilations), so I dropped the idea and moved on to more accessible pastures.

About a year and a half ago, I decided to give Zappa another try, but this time I was going to jump in the deep end: I downloaded all of it. Even after deleting all the double tracks I had due to compilations and reissues, it was 767 tracks spread over fifty-one albums. It's taken me twenty months to fully come to grips with the man's near-psychotic compulsion to spew out records, and I often feel like I'll never truly understand most of it. A lot of it is impenetrably dense ('69's Uncle Meat, '71's 200 Motels, '94's Civilization Phaze III), and many of the releases feel too colored by Zappa's arrogance and self-righteousness to lend themselves to favorable judgement ('81's You Are What You Is, '83's The Man From Utopia, '84's Thing-Fish, '85's Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention).

So where should one start? What is the approachable gateway drug you need to slingshot yourself into the hard stuff? There aren't too many examples of Zappa just being Zappa; an impossibly gifted arranger and musical scientist who pushed rock to the limits of its genre. It's not an easy search, but some examples come to mind.

1969's Hot Rats is the earliest candidate for a Zappa primer. Created during the heights of Zappa's Beefheart years, it features the affable psychedelic bluesman on lead vocals in Willie The Pimp, and the A-side opener is Peaches En Regalia, a true Zappa classic full of his trademark labyrinthine melodies, idiosyncratic arrangements and surprisingly catchy hooks.

1973's Over-Nite Sensation similarly meshes Zappa's ear for melody with his exuberant instrumentations, and remains one of his most celebrated and best-sold albums. It's a free-flowing, lighthearted romp through swagger-heavy organ riffs, titanic guitar solos and showcases Zappa's penchant for exceedingly dirty rhymes, what with all the casual hippie sex, exhibitionism and bestiality.

Joe's Garage (1979) is a particularly rounded indicator of what the man was capable of. It's a rock opera telling a vaguely autobiographical tale about a much-censured and censored musician and his misadventures through the world of traitorous women, devious record executives and lecherous scientologists, all set to a stellar soundtrack of catchy rock, soulful ballads and exquisite guitar work. It may just use traditional rock as a device to signify how typical and harmless the titular musician's work is, but in nonetheless proves to the average man what Zappa self-importantly knew all along: that if he really wanted to, he could probably just have slapped together some cheap rock and roll and shot straight into the big time, but his work ethic demanded he do it the hard way, and maybe prove to everyone how incredibly smart he was in the process (arrogant prick).

Also, despite what I said earlier about You Are What You Is being a tad too preachy and haughty for my tastes, it does have some killer tunes on it, with a surprising amount of them having very radio-friendly production. It's a pop-rock epic with patronizingly silly lyrics about televangelists, Halloween blowjobs and what it's like to be really, really good-looking. Also, if you only listen to one song I've linked to in this blog post, please please please do yourself a favor and listen to this one, because it's utterly hilarious and aweXome.

All that said, as primers, these four albums are all deficient in one way or another, as they all have elements that repel rather than entice. Hot Rats's progressive complexity dissuades the casual listener, while Over-Nite Sensation's overly psychedelic sensibilities can make it sound very dated. While this is, to some, not necessarily a bad thing, I find it gives a false impression of what Zappa stood for. He always strove to have a deeper, more cynical take on composition and subject matter than his contemporaries, and I feel Over-Nite Sensation undersells his creative scope; it (and a host of his other albums, including '74's Apostrophe and '79's Sheik Yerbouti) is what Rolling Stone once disparagingly referred to as "well-orchestrated joke music." Not that there's anything wrong with "joke music," in my book, but I just don't feel like Over-Nite Sensation is all that "well-orchestrated," really. Don't get me wrong, it's nice how loose and improvised-sounding it is, but it just doesn't convey that tightness that makes some of Zappa's strongest work so unique.

The same could be said for 1981's trifecta of instrumental works, Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More and Return Of The Son Of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, as well as 1988's Guitar. While it's very nice to sit and listen to an insanely talented guitarist do live improv for four hundred fucking hours, there are plenty of people who could do that, and once again, it doesn't really give you the full range of the man's talents.

As for Joe's Garage and You Are What You Is, their sarcastic tone and surface veneer of frivolousness do not make them terribly inviting, and You Are What You Is contains hints of the Zappa to come: 80s Zappa is incredibly soulless and mechanical, which is great if you're into that kind of thing (see '84's Them Or Us and '86's Jazz From Hell), but only of interest to the truly committed. No: the best way into Zappa is Zoot Allures.

It's an inconspicuous record, tucked between the unbridled enthusiasm of the early 70s stuff and the colder, more scientific experimentation that came next, resulting in a neatly balanced mixture of both. The production is kept from getting too ambitious, giving each track a clarity and minimalism seldom heard from Zappa, and the compositions are mostly blues-based, catchy and accessible. His rollicking silly side gets to shine, as well as his nuanced perfectionism and knack for atmosphere, sometimes even on the same track.

Also, because of the relatively simple orchestration, every track on the album functioned well as a live number, as evidenced by their frequent appearances on set lists and live albums. Black Napkins, especially, became a fixture of Zappa's live sets for the rest of his career, and understandably so; Zappa deftly solos one of his patented "sound sculptures" around a slick chord progression so smooth it fairly drips cool. It's Zappa at his relaxed, assured best: no politics, no message and no overdoing it. The Bozzio/Estrada rhythm section was at its seamless best, while the rest of the band does almost nothing, tasteful minimalism personified.

Zoot Allures also contains one of my all-time favorite Zappa songs: The Torture Never Stops, a nine-minute-plus canvas of murky atmospherics and moody theatricality. A woman screams in pain/pleasure as Zappa's lyrics describe a grim dungeon lit only by "the light of the iron sausage" (the jokes are never far off).

Zoot Allures's crisp production, straightforward instrumentation and tendency to stick to basics as far as genre is concerned also have a wonderful side effect: they ensured the record would age remarkably well. More than any other Zappa release, Zoot Allures sounds like it could have been released yesterday. The quality of the recording is nothing short of amazing for its time, with Zappa's sleasily whispered vocals on Find Her Finer sounding like he's right there in the room with you (which is kind of creepy, actually).

Those vocals are typical of the veneer of pornographic sleaze that permeates Zoot Allures, and indeed much of Zappa's work, so the album is a gateway to his work not only musically, but thematically as well. Ms. Pinky describes a masturbation aid of some sort, while Find Her Finer offers some helpful pointers on picking up women. Wind Up Workin' In A Gas Station, Wonderful Wino and Disco Boy may not be quite as amorous lyrically, but even Zappa couldn't be fixing to bone someone (or something) on every song. Rather, they convey Zappa's snide social commentary in the more jovial tone that better suited them, as opposed to the bitter hatred that infused records like You Are What You Is and The Man From Utopia.

Altogether, Zoot Allures exudes a cool minimalism and decisive sense of purpose that makes it not only an ideal introduction to Zappa's catalogue, but an excellent stand-alone record; in a weird way, it sounds more like Zappa than Zappa ever did. Paradoxically, it's so typically Zappa that it stands out to the point of being atypical, so even if you don't like most of his work, you might end up liking Zoot Allures.

Personally, though, I am fascinated by the man's seemingly endless catalogue of diverse work. He wasn't always great (in fact, sometimes he downright sucked), but to me, the shitty stuff just makes the good stuff more interesting, and vice-versa. His preference of quantity over quality leaves more for dissection and analysis, and one cannot help but feel he wanted it that way.

Zoot Allures may not have been Zappa at his most forward-thinking or experimental, but I feel it was among the places where he most efficiently used the results of his experiments to create something more fit for public consumption. Granted, such crowd-pleasing wasn't exactly what Zappa was all about, and in fact worked explicitly against for much of his career, but what makes Zoot Allures such an impressive accomplishment is how it demonstrates Zappa's abilities to craft even his far-reaching and often impenetrably nonsensical composition into an album that the casual listener can enjoy, yet still retains that unique Zappa flavor.

Perhaps it stands as testament to something Zappa could have given us, but didn't. Perhaps it's proof that he really could have been monumentally huge, given us a body of music that, rather than be fodder for speculation, could still be selling truckloads of copies the world over. In the end, he chose to be inaccessible and uncompromising, rather than give us what we really wanted. Awful jackass.

SWANS - SOUNDTRACKS FOR THE BLIND (1996)

Soundtracks For The Blind is like a post-apocalyptic wasteland of an album. There may still be islands and isolated pockets of civilization, but for the most part, humanity (or music) as we know it is gone, baby, gone. Outside of those few understandable, classifiable outposts of humanity, what are we left with? Desolate, bleak and opaque emptinesses of unforgiving noise. Soundtracks For The Blind was Swans' send-off to the rest of the world, a last, screaming, poignant message before disappearing into their side projects.

Because that's all Swans are now: a side project, just as unworthy of the name as any of the 'Swans related projects' the troubled couple at the band's center have participated in over the years. Where they once reigned supreme as kings of noise, perennially eluding classification as they plumbed the depths of what music could be, they are now nothing but a faint post-rock echo of their former selves, robotically masturbating away in an uninteresting and unrewarding corner of the magnificent sexual arcade they exposed our ears to during their original run.

And it was one hell of a fucking run. Bursting like a slimy, unwelcome mushroom from the fertile soil of the early 80s New York noise scene, they began as a brutal, unrelenting auditory assault, with vocalist/guitarist/whatever-the-hell-it-takesist Michael Gira, the band's only permanent member, acting as commandant. The inhuman industrial harshness of Filth ('83), Cop ('84) and Young God ('84) relented somewhat with the addition of Jarboe on keyboards and backing vocals in 1985, resulting in the deft and somewhat digitized - but no less horrifying - Greed ('85) and Holy Money ('86).

In 1987, they made what many consider their greatest work: the glam-tinged goth excess that is Children Of God. It's a staggering record, over an hour of glorious theatricality that defies easy categorization, or indeed description. It hypnotizes as it anesthetizes, like binge-drinking your way through a satanic seance.

What followed was no less great, but a tad more subtle. Gira and Jarboe experimented away from the band as The World Of Skin, resulting in three fantastic albums, the first two earthy and vague and the third positively chipper in comparison, flirting as it does with acoustic folk-pop sensibilities and far gentler strokes than the couple were known for. Swans kept functioning contemporaneously, evolving in similarly radio-friendly ways with The Burning World ('89), White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity ('91) and Love Of Life ('92). They had the closest thing they ever would to commercial success when their cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart became a minor hit in 1988. The cover itself is forgettable, but it gave Gira a tantalizing glimpse of the mainstream recognition that he never seemed to forgive the world for denying him. This, perhaps, tinged his later work with even more pessimism and bleakness, including that of the album I'm ostensibly trying to write about here.

Come the mid-nineties, Swans had become an iron warhorse of a band, having gone through multiple lineups and redefinitions of their sound, and released the distinctly post-rocky The Great Annihilator in 1995. At the time, it must have seemed like that album was sealing their ultimate fate: noise pioneers turned alt-rock outsiders, a band that lived a very human lifetime in only thirteen years. They had been angry, squealing infants, opinionated and melodramatic youths, thoughtful adults and finally, bitter, withered seniors. When Gira announced that the next album would be their last, fans could not have expected more than a final whimper before his troops finally marched into the great unknown.

They could not have been more wrong. Soundtracks For The Blind is a two-and-a-half-hour explosion of exquisitely carved ambient soundscaping, punctuated by bursts of brutal post-rock at its murderous best and further audio experimentation that, at its best, melds the ambience with the rock, and even at its worst, provides wondrous twists and turns to the deranged odyssey that is listening to this album.

Seriously, this record is like a surreal auditory labyrinth. Both discs (it's a double album - naturally) open with vaguely parallel introductory hymns, with the Silver CD (the discs are not numbered - that would be too easy) opting for an entirely instrumental, synth-based gate into the maze, while the Copper CD samples Jarboe at her creepily childlike best before the lead-in to the synth line. She sounds for all the world like a disembodied voice wafting down from the attic as she babbles nonsensically about "the filthy premise of your terrible innocence," before the ambience envelops you.

Both CDs also feature lengthy post-rock epics early on their tracklists, with the Copper CD jumping straight to the primal major-chord euphoria of The Sound, while the Silver CD takes a lengthy detour into the blind emptiness of I Was A Prisoner In Your Skull before the repenting confessions of Helpless Child take over. I Was A Prisoner In Your Skull also gives us the first taste of what is easily Soundtracks For The Blind's most disturbing element: the samples.

The Silver CD's samples seem largely preoccupied with health and death, with the uncomfortably awkward rant of I Was A Prisoner In Your Skull giving us a glimpse into the mind of a man so determined to tell us how "fucked up" a nameless third party is that he himself seems to rank fairly low on the sanity scale after a good three minutes, and a pair of senior citizens describe their woes in How They Suffer. A child chants blissfully on The Beautiful Days, unaware of the dank sickness welling up behind her.

The Copper CD speaks more to femininity and the exploitation thereof, with a befuddled father detailing his concerns for a teenage daughter in Her Mouth Is Filled With Honey, while Minus Something features a phone sex worker who sounds at the end of her rope. Where the hell did Swans get all these samples, anyway? I can't seriously imagine a source for any of these that didn't involve some particularly soul-destroying research.

The themes of the samples vaguely reflect the discs themselves. The Silver CD is all physicality and body horror, like it's a soundtrack to a David Lynch film written by H.P. Lovecraft. Live Through Me's earnest tingling and innocence preclude the ruthless battering of Jarboe's Yum-Yab Killers, one of several live recordings that were plundered from Swans' no-doubt massive library. All Lined Up's soulless twisting of a track from Gira's '95 solo album, Drainland, is a dichotomy of muttered vocals and massive, gothic refrains. Samples and loops take on lives of their own on Surrogate 2 and the aforementioned How They Suffer before the proceedings are brought to a surreal close with Animus, another post-rock live recording, this one fraught with a queer sense of self-righteous unwholesomeness that keeps you guessing until the whole thing disappears into drone insanity.

It is worth noting that while the original and seemingly unaltered versions of many of the live tracks had appeared before, on other records (Die Tür Ist Zu, Swans Are Dead), Soundtracks For The Blind offers definitive editions of those songs, fully realized and merged with the rest of the album to create its patchwork quilt of noise. It wouldn't do to try to pass off a bunch of lengthy post-rock buildups as an album without giving them some kind of sheen and eloquence... oh wait, that's kind of what the post-reunion Swans albums sound like.

The Copper CD is looser, dreamier and less defined, but no less excellent. It's above-noted femininity is underscored by having Jarboe appear more frequently than on the other CD. A very early Swans number, Your Property, is given new dimensions of disgust by Jarboe, as well as more studied and mature instrumentation by the ever-diligent backing band. The Sound's lyrics are a pleading prayer to the protagonist's mother, while the absolutely blood-curdlingly terrifying Hypogirl proves that Swans could be just as effective without samples and technological trickery; Jarboe on her own can scare the wits out of you. Fan's Lament and Blood Section offer yet more elements to Soundtracks with their straightforwardness, while Secret Friends yields more gentle touches.

As disparate as the elements composing the album are, none of them ever feel out of place or unnecessary; all the tracks contribute to a whole that does not need to be understood in any literal sense, because it can be felt. Soundtracks For The Blind is the perfect name for it, really, as it doesn't tell a story so much as it fills out some weighty, intangible object, something earthy and glistening and disgusting and endlessly fascinating.

Never before I heard it and never since have I felt so much like I could truly disappear into an album. It's so carefully constructed and yet it seems so effortless and instinctive; Swans made it look easy to be as divergent and unique as they were, while all along keeping me in awe of them. Soundtracks For The Blind, to me, is music in its purest form, primal and unadulterated... or perhaps 'unadulterated' is the wrong word, because it was their indulgence in adulteration, spoilage and corruption that made them so great. By plumbing the depths, they kept themselves above and beyond any other band that has graced my ears to this day, and in keeping with this contradictory nature, they crafted, with Soundtracks For The Blind, a record of perfect music without really 'writing' any songs, in the traditional sense of the word.

Soundtracks For The Blind is music beyond music. It's indescribably powerful sound, intricately cultivated and carved to the shape of your ear and brain over a career of brilliant experimentation that, in retrospect, seems to have existed solely to bring humanity this album. It sounds like everything and nothing that came before it, it has not been equalled since, and even if it ever will be, it will never be forgotten. At least not by me.

BUTTHOLE SURFERS - LOCUST ABORTION TECHNICIAN (1987)

As the champions of knowing idiocy, the Butthole Surfers had to have had some idea they knew what they were doing when they created Locust Abortion Technician, a half-hour or so of scummy post-punk riddled with samples, nonsense and drug-fueled lunacy. They manage to hide it pretty well, though: not a shred of those thirty-four minutes makes any sense whatsoever, and try as hard as you want to decipher it, LAT offers no answers. Many times have descriptions such as "the ultimate drug record," and "just listening to it gets you high" been bandied around, but let me assure you: if it's drug music you're looking for, then look no further.

I've often wondered what it must have been like mixing songs like HAY and Kuntz. Did the band actually sit there in their home studio in Austin, pondering over minor creative decisions in a deep and meaningful way? "Yeah, just turn that loop of Gibby saying 'hey!' over and over again up a little for that last part, then we can fade in that reversed/sped-up drum track. This'll really bring the track to its fullest potential and make the album what it's supposed to be." And when they 'wrote' Kuntz, which is essentially a lengthy sample of a Thai pop song with some typically random delay effects thrown in, was there a deep sociological message they were trying to convey, and if so, what was it? Did the Butthole boys believe that through music, they could demonstrate the fallibility of the construct we refer to as 'language' by showing that without context, words are nothing but meaningless symbols? Or did they just get high and trust their luck? Do they even remember making this record?

They certainly pleaded ignorance when an interviewer allegedly asked them about the recording process for a previous EP, Creamed Corn From The Socket Of Davis. Guitarist Paul Leary said he remembered choosing the cover art, but other than that, none of them could recall the release even existed, never mind details of its recording.

But is that all there is to LAT? A bunch of nihilistic Texas punks high on acid spazzing out in a home studio and seeing what comes out of it? Could a group of drug-addled wastoids fronted by a former accountant really write and record a song that so well captures the ominous certainty of aging and loneliness as 22 Going On 23? Could the musings and ideas of a few artsy, scatology-minded perverts really amount to a song like U.S.S.A., delving as deeply as it does into the frantic hypoxia of Cold War anxieties while at the same time turning them on their head? The answer, of course, is "Yes, they could, and yes, they did."

Because the best part of LAT is its irreverence and balls-out lunacy. Sometimes the only way to really express the heights and depths of speculation and realization to which drugs can take you is to make the form of your expression as random and chaotic as the drugs themselves. Musically speaking, LAT may be bookended by arguably superior albums (1986's Rembrandt Pussyhorse and 1988's Hairway To Steven), but neither one of them manages to match the energy, darkness, euphoria and, surprisingly enough, the consistency and coherence of Locoust Abortion Technician. As ambitious as the other two offerings were, their insistence on telling the whole story on every song means that they're not as quick to the punch, and far from being incomplete sketches, LAT's grooves and moods say all that needs to be said; they just do it better, faster and more accessibly.

And it's not like there aren't 'real songs' on Locust Abortion Technician. Human Cannonball is a precursor to the more focused work found on Hairway To Steven and later releases, featuring clearly sung vocals, complete with catchy lyrics and vocal hooks, over a fairly traditional chord progression, and The O-Men, bizarre and terrifying as it is, is actually a neat little barrage of genre-bending noise rock that satisfies well with its simplicity.

The latter song also emphasizes part of what makes LAT rise above the Surfers' guitar-driven post-punk contemporaries: how clear it sounds. It seems that in the midst of their drug bingeing, Leary, Haynes and the other Buttholes actually did some exemplary EQ and level work; every instrument can be heard with crystal clarity, every acid-drenched guitar overdub and battered floor tom is as audible as Gibby Haynes's frantic hollering and pleading, with none of the weird distance and treble-heavy muddiness that plagued the other important records of LAT's time and genre, such as Big Black's Songs About Fucking, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation and Swans' Children Of God. It's no surprise, really, that Leary went on to record songs for Sublime, U2 and Daniel Johnston and others: the man has a gift for production, and LAT offers the first real glimpses of that gift.

A full fifth of Locust Abortion Technician is the smoked-up Sabbath riffage of Sweat Loaf, which is inconveniently placed at the start of the album, as if the Surfers were trying their damndest to ensure no one would have the patience or interest to listen to the whole thing... or maybe it's a warning? The horrifying scorn and drudgery of what follows is as hypnotic as it is off-putting. Pittsburgh To Lebanon and Weber ask dark and delicious questions of the listener, before providing their own answer, which is, as it always is with Locust Abortion Technician, drugs, drugs and more drugs. Drugs ask the questions and drugs provide the answers. In case I haven't stated it clearly enough, this is an album made by and for people who do drugs, enjoy doing drugs and are on drugs right now.

Aside from the aforementioned Kuntz, there is more cryptic humor scattered throughout, including the famously nonsensical punchline to the record's opening joke, and the fact that there are two separate and subtly different tracks on it called Graveyard, with, once again, no concrete explanation offered. It could be said that the Surfers' ever-superior take on psychedelia owes much to their refusal to take themselves seriously. While other drug bands scuttle about frantically, trying to tell deep truths about their trips and how their doors of perception were like, opened so wide, man, the Buttholes always seemed to secretly know that it was all completely meaningless, and the strength and surprising beauty of that knowledge was never more evident than it was on the blisteringly nonsensical Locust Abortion Technician.

ELLIOTT SMITH - ELLIOTT SMITH (1995) and EITHER/OR (1997)

I recently wrote a short piece about Elliott Smith's posthumous release, From A Basement On The Hill, where I claimed that it was my favorite album. I still hold to that, but you have to understand that in spite of its greatness, it is a flawed work, hampered by an inconsistent songwriting quality and uncertainty in its direction. I just like it a lot because it's the most varied and layered of his albums, offering near-endless playability and repeat listening value. Every time I listen to it, I hear something new and great that I hadn't heard before.

But Smith managed to release two albums while he was alive that, rather than take you on any kind of journey, are succinct, direct and to-the-point about what they are: masterpieces, pure and simple. There's not a song wasted on either of them as they firmly establish Smith's legacy as the perfect fusion of eloquent songwriter, unique performer and troubled, awkward loner.

Elliott Smith and Either/Or track Smith's trajectory as he comes into his own, veering away from the noisy indie ruminations of his band, Heatmiser, in which he shared writing duties with fellow guitarist/singer Neil Gust. On their first two albums, '93's Dead Air and '94's Cop & Speeder, the Gust songs and Smith songs are interchangeable, really, with both men displaying an aptitude for sludgy, guitar-driven punk with little in the way of melody. On 1996's more mellow and melodic Mic City Sons, however, it becomes evident that Gust prefers vague and moody sketches of songs, whereas Smith has taken to crafting hook-heavy pop songs that have a far more human face on them, said face being Smith's own.

His intriguing strength of character is the instrument he really perfected more than any other over the shared trilogy of albums he made between '95 and '97. While Mic City Sons is an excellent album in its own right, its main detractor is the odd dichotomy between Smith's subtle and precise strokes as he figures out how to push people's buttons with his voice and Gust's brute-force methodology as he powers through his songs on charisma alone, largely forgoing any attempts at style and finesse. On the solo albums that blanket Mic City Sons on either side, one can witness Smith blooming without the distractions (On a side note, I just want to say that although this paragraph makes it sound like Neil Gust is a stupid dick who can't write any good songs, that's not how I feel at all. Heatmiser wouldn't have been the same without him, and he was as important to the band as Smith was.)

There is a hint of seriousness to Elliott Smith that wasn't there on his '94 solo debut, Roman Candle. Not that Roman Candle isn't dark as all hell, but there is a feeling on Elliott Smith that the stakes have been raised, like he knows people are listening now. It kicks off with what is probably most people's introduction to Smith's music: Needle In The Hay. It's straightforward to the point of recklessness, nothing but a few two- or three-string chords and fiercely whispered phrases, and is an excellent opening track in how it perfectly demonstrates Smith's MO. It's no coincidence that it has become probably his most famous song, but not because it's a particularly good song (it's not, really). Rather, it subsists entirely on Smith's style of playing and singing, showcasing his palette without really painting anything of significance.

Once that's been safely established, he then delivers a series of songs in what would become one of Smith's signature styles: a dreamy, hazy concoction of drawled classical guitar chords linked together with eloquently sloping arrangements that already attest to his budding genius. Clementine's stoned, cocksure gait and blissfully resigned lyrics contrast wonderfully with the indescribable beauty of its delivery. The hook in The White Lady Loves You More's refrains are about as country as Smith would ever get, while the insistent strumming of the verses saunters wonderfully, keeping things from getting too traditional.

There are also detours, tracks that are essentially punk songs performed with an acoustic guitar - namely Christian Brothers, Southern Belle and St. Ides Heaven - that maintain his loud rock sensibilities, and although they accomplish little of what many of Smith's indie and grunge contemporaries could not (there is even a Heatmiser version of Christian Brothers that proves how easily these songs transform into rock anthems), they are nonetheless just as well-crafted as the more pop-oriented songs are. One gets the feeling that the sludge and the dirt were more than just devices to Smith, however: he seems to truly have had a love for just busting out a really loud tune once in a while. It's easy to forget that there was a boisterous, fun-loving side to him, and while the songs' subject matter remains as angst-ridden and difficult as ever, there is definite joy in their performance.

They also help establish a special little mood that persists throughout both Elliott Smith and Either/Or: that of barely restrained power. Smith had a gift for sounding like he was just barely keeping from exploding with anguish whenever he opened his mouth, like all his frustrations were perennially about to cave in on him. This mood complements the albums' lo-fi production well, as to fully let himself go Smith would have need a budget and production value he would only attain once he signed with DreamWorks to release '98's XO and 2000's Figure 8. And of course, once we finally get to see him explode into hi-fi, one can't help but be a little bit disappointed, as if he'd been demystified.

Elliott Smith is, essentially, a troubador's album. Its beauty lies in its simplicity and directness; it wagers everything on the quality of its songwriting and the personality of the performer, and triumphs without question. Either/Or, on the other hand, is a rock album, where Smith has become a frontman rather than solo performer. There's a slight cockiness and swagger to it, like Smith has established beyond a doubt that there are people who love his work, and while that confidence does destroy some of the intimacy that made the first two albums so precious, it allows his songcraft to truly shine, and man oh man, does it ever fucking shine.

The aforementioned restraint is all over Speed Trials, its furiously pattered brush drums ringing out like punctuation to Smith's voice, which has now achieved the silky slide that would stay with him until he died. Just like Elliott Smith's opening track established that album's style, so does Speed Trials break in the listener to how Either/Or will function: an album of songs that hover somewhere between acoustic pop ballads and full-on rock anthems. Ballad Of Big Nothing's refrains are catchier than they have any right to be, and while Pictures Of Me might be fairly cheesy as a song and a bit too Beatles-esque for my tastes, its assurance and boldness are undeniable, and it provides the arrangement blueprint for several of his later organ-driven pop numbers, especially Waltz #2 and Baby Britain.

It also highlights one of the most important things about Smith's music: that he was okay with making very traditional stylistic choices. There is something distinctly silly about the little scale-climbing hooks in Punch And Judy, again attesting to his boisterous side. It is a testament to Smith's skill that he makes those little moments work on such a moody album, rather than have them stand out. He gets a little carried away with this traditionalism on XO and Figure 8, in my opinion, resulting in jaunty, frivolous songs like In The Lost And Found, Son Of Sam and Happiness, which remain some his weakest songs ever. But it still works on Either/Or, kept in check either consciously or as a result of Smith's inexperience with the form.

There are, of course, callbacks to the minimal troubador stylings of the earlier albums on Either/Or, namely on the beautifully dismal depression and hopelessness of Between The Bars, the shy, eerie Angeles, and, most noticeably, the lone shaft of sunlight at the end of the tunnel: Say Yes.

Elliott Smith and Either/Or have both similar beginnings and endings. Say Yes is the answer to The Biggest Lie in the same way that Speed Trials expands and perfects what Needle In The Hay began. However, in the case of the album closers, it is a change for the worse. Say Yes feels clumsy and forced when compared to the heartbreaking little gem that is The Biggest Lie.

The Biggest Lie is simply superior to Say Yes in every single way (except maybe the group vocal harmonies). Where Say Yes is based on carefully rehearsed chords that feel a little too lifted from a Cat Stevens song, The Biggest Lie builds on instinctive plucking. Say Yes's refrain is almost meaningless in its cliché simplicity, and it's somewhat jarring to hear Smith discard his trademark obscurity and metaphor for the pedestrian casualness of Say Yes's lyrics. The Biggest Lie is fairly direct, too, but it keeps the mystery intact by leaving holes in the story. What is "the biggest lie?" There are as many answers as there are Elliott Smith fans, and their answers attest more to their own basic nature and state of mind than they ever could about Smith, who took the answer with him to his grave.

There's also something to the vocal delivery of The Biggest Lie that is nothing short of incredible. I've always felt that the greatest talent a singer can have is to be able to deliver clichéd and oft-repeated lines as if they were gospel, absolute and utter truth, so in a way the singer has to be a good actor, and as James Cagney once said, the trick to acting is to look the other actor in the eye and tell the truth.

So when Elliott Smith sings the line "everything you do makes me wanna die," is it the simple purity and gutsiness of the phrase that puts tears in my eyes every time I hear it, or is it the strength of Smith's performance? Is it so fucking great because he is, as Jimmy Cagney would say, "telling the truth?" I honestly don't know, but I do know that no point of Say Yes even comes close to the raw, bristling emotion of that moment. It's incredible, an exceptionally beautiful moment that stands out even in a body of work full of heartbreaking genius, and it gets me every time.