Either/Or

Elliott Smith recorded this album in basements and bedrooms across Portland, Oregon, in between commitments to his other band Heatmiser. Most of it was done in friends' houses. One recording engineer met Smith at a house party, noticed he was more interested in the recording equipment in the corner than in the other people at the party, and let him come back to use it. Smith tracked the vocals for one of the album's songs there because his own gear had broken. He played every instrument himself, double and triple-tracking his vocals using techniques borrowed from Paul McCartney, building harmonies that sound like a room of people and were made by one person who mostly preferred to be alone.

Either/Or takes its title from a Kierkegaard book about the tension between an aesthetic life and an ethical one, which is the kind of reference that tells you immediately what kind of songwriter Elliott Smith was. The production is spare and beautiful, acoustic guitar at the center of almost every song, the arrangements expanding just enough to serve the song without ever drawing attention to themselves. Director Gus Van Sant discovered the album while making Good Will Hunting and placed three of its songs in the film. The Oscar ceremony that followed, where Smith performed in a white suit on the same stage as Celine Dion, remains one of the most surreal moments in awards show history.

What the songs are actually about is longing, self-destruction, tenderness, and the way alcohol and sadness can become a lifestyle rather than a phase. Smith had a gift for writing lines that felt confessional without being confessional, specific enough to feel true and open enough to feel like your own. "Between the Bars," "Say Yes," "Angeles," and "Ballad of Big Nothing" are four songs that will stay with you. Smith died in 2003 at age thirty-four. This album is essential.