This week Paper Covers Rock is presenting a live Elliott Smith show in five installments. Mp3s in each entry will expire when the next installment is posted. All apologies from the writer/recordist, etc.

Elliott Smith (Live @ Largo, 4/11/98) tuning break “Clementine” banter “St. Ide’s Heaven” banter “Oh Well, OK” “Say Yes” “Some Song”

In yesterday’s post I touted Elliott Smith’s occasional, but spot-on, use of references to other songs within his own compositions. In soft, lilting “Clementine,” off his 1995 self-titled (or untitled, depends who you ask) album, it’s an old-timey song that haunts the tune.

“Oh My Darling Clementine” dates back to 1884, and though it’s been made innocuous with age and repetition, it’s pretty damn dark–about a man mourning a dead lover. But Smith wasn’t really relying on that thematic heft. Rather the other tune is important here as an earworm, replaying in a barfly’s head over and over, like the doubts, worries and regrets he can’t shake.

It’s songs like “Clementine,” with its last call ambiance, and the thrumming, quietly seething “St. Ide’s Heaven” that made Smith’s reputation as a punk-bred pop gutter poet par excellence. It’s songs like this that, quite naturally, gave him an air of tragedy.

Bleak stuff here–confessions of the glassy-eyed guy mellowing out his meth tweak with malt liquor, roaming the streets like a menacing ghost. If any of us have been in this situation, it’s not likely that we were as self-aware as the voice narrating “St. Ide’s.” That makes it bleaker still, the sense of routine, of embracing self-ruin. And it’s being played against something, or someone, as a refusal–against the judgements of the song’s “you,” against a world where “everyone is a fucking pro” armed with useless advice. And Portland’s broken-light-bulb moon looks down on it all without comment.

Next up was one of the slowest, most delicate of Smith’s compositions, XO’s “Oh Well, OK.” The song is a bit of a puzzle to me. The lyrics are very internal, or almost a coded message. The refrain sighs and gives up, but it’s never clear what the effort in question is. Even though the lyrics address someone, the song feels more like it’s about intricate ruminations going on inside someone’s mind. A bit funny that Elliott introduced it, “This one’s slower, so it should be easier… if it wasn’t for this,” pointing to his head.

Assenting to some insistent requests, Elliott played what might well be my favorite of his songs, “Say Yes.” What I like about it is its mixture of the upbeat–that descending guitar line, that cascading melody, the overt optimism–and that same golden sadness that always brings me back to Smith’s work–it is, after all, a breakup song.

Holding aside all the baggage–I can, but really there’s tons of it–the song often evokes for me the story of John Lennon falling for Yoko Ono upon seeing an installation of hers where the single word, “yes,” is painted on a platform above a ladder, enchanted by the philosophical positivity. It’s a nice story. There are few more pleasant words to hear, and every plea has “say yes” at its heart.

Back in Largo 1998, the audience requests kept flowing, so Elliott decoded, and obliged, a call for “Same Song”–it sounded like the dude wanted to hear “Say Yes” again–to play casually-named b-side “Some Song.” Over droning acoustic power chords, Smith indulged a bit of downtrodden fatalism. After abuse, put-downs, ostracism, the you of the song sees only more down the road, a damaged future to hold up against an unhappy past. I’m not sure whether it’s accurate to call it “hope,” but the chorus offers at least the possibility of solace in the another: “Help me kill my time/’cause I’ll never be fine.” Unfortunately, the focus is on the last half of that couplet…

Donate to the Elliott Smith Memorial Fund.
Elliott Smith music on iTunes.
S/T at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)
Either/Or at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)
XO at Newbury Comics.