Elliott Smith

Hey Charlie !

          This is my first post on the blog and I thought I'd talk about my favourite musician, the extremely talented indie-rock songwriter, Elliott Smith. (That's him right below on the picture)

          In case you're not familiar with him and his work, here are a few things ; even though his songs have a very distinctive sound - mostly because of his voice, actually - you can hear a rather strong evolution between the acoustic-guitar-and-voice-only songs of his first solo effort, Roman Candle - which were actually demos for the grunge/rock band he was part of at the time - the careful craftsmanship of the more pop-rock Figure 8 and the heavier, more experimental sound of the posthumously released From A Basement On The Hill (almost noise rock at times). If you play music you might be interested in checking the chords to his songs ; they are almost invariably unusual ones, used in a very original way and yet he somehow manages to make them sound natural by writing very subtle melodies on  top of them.
          You may also want to listen very carefully to his songs' lyrics that he used to constantly rewrote to make them the best possible. And usually, by the time they were recorded, they were. They can be interpreted in a thousand and he probably thought of them all when writing them.
      
             More simply he was a genius guitarist, pianist and lyricist and I feel like he deserves a lot of credit for his work that he never really seems to get.

Here are links to some of his songs - I can't say these are the best, they are all :

Coast To Coast

Alameda

No Name #4

Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands

Roman Candle

Cupid's Trick

Can't Make A sound

Waltz #2 (XO)

Miss Misery

Pretty Mary K (alt version)