The latest offering from Elliott Smith, indie rock's King of Beautiful Sadness, represents a sort of departure from his earlier work. In Roman Candle, self-titled, Either/Or, and even to some extent XO, Smith recorded his songs with stripped-down instrumentation. Often the songs would consist simply of Smith's vocals and acoustic guitar. The laid-back nature of the songs, coupled with Smith's personal and meaningful lyrics gave those recordings a very intimate feel. But in XO, his major label debut, Smith started to add more instrumentation to his recordings. And with Figure 8 Smith continues the direction began with XO, adding even more musical layers than before.
Which, despite complaints from some of Smith's older fans, is not a bad thing. For one thing, it allows Smith to write a very strong musical record, instead of having his acoustic guitar merely provide backup for his bittersweet melodies and words. On many of the tunes, the piano functions as the musical foundation for the song, replacing the acoustic guitar from previous albums. And electric guitar leads, orchestral work, and other keyboard parts fill in the sound much more than on any other Smith album. Several songs use this format with tremendous results, most notably "Everything Means Nothing to Me," "Junk Bond Trader," and "Happiness." And several songs, such as "I Better be Quiet Now," are reminiscent of the earlier, and more straight-forward, albums. And, as always, Smith's melodies complement his lyrics exceptionally well.
However, there aren't any songs that come near conjuring up the emotion and feeling that "Waltz #2" (XO), "Pitseleh," "Between the Bars" and others did. No songs on Figure 8 will make the listener cry, or want to cry, as in the past releases. Again, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. But with Figure 8, Elliott Smith has written a brilliant and deep album, instead of merely a collection of songs, as in past releases. For some, that might take some time to come to grips with, but it is well worth the effort.
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 2000Reviewed by Ross ThompsonMuch has been made of the fact that Elliott Smith's music sounds like The Beatles, and to be frank, this is an argument that I do not really agree with. This school of thought evolved largely from the fact that Smith covered the fab four's Because for the closing credits of American Beauty; therefore, if there is truth in the whole Beatles similarity theory, then it is more John Lennon than Paul…Similar sounding releases
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