In the '60s Tom Wolfe called it "poverty chic:" Four years after graduation, half the cheerleading squad from my run-of-the-mill, suburban high school ended up raising bees on a Vermont commune.
Maybe it's their way of exercising some sort of middle-class guilt or self-regret. Good for them. They're cute, personable girls — some are even smart — and most of my acquaintances and I had no reason to recoil from them. Now, no. We know some of their parents live on country-club grounds, and we're pretty sure we know who pays for the patchouli. They're exercising, sure, running from something.
In the '90s Wolfe's observation found bearing in a new lapse in lifestyle judgment, that of the "loathing chic." Call it what you will, from Jedediah Purdy's assertion that modern-day Americans set a new low for anti-social behavior by swathing themselves in Seinfeld-fed "irony culture" to bands such as Matchbox 20 gettin' the bitches by growling vaguely self-deprecating slogans to Alicia Silverstone's Cluelesscharacter chiding her half-brother for wasting his time with "complaint rock." Fact is, centering behavior around a perceived self-hate can seem less like a solution to societal ills and more like an escapist gimmick. It's running, maybe sulking, from the truth.
For better or worse, Elliott Smith's made a career out of being its balladeer. As Janeane Garofalo trades her thrift-store aesthetic for a Marie Clairecover shot, he has become the pre-eminent cynical conscience for the funloving post-grunge set. Perhaps no one else applied. Few songwriters are more frank about their hang-ups, from people problems to chemical dependency, and fewer still have the deceptively melodic chops to suck listeners into an honesty exhibition. For four CDs, he has questioned complacency and made a solid case for the relevance of still feelin' like shit. Problem is, on his fifth, Figure 8, he has a hard time believing it. And the songs suffer.
It's as if Smith's clamoring for the formula that won him adoration and an Oscar nomination (for "Miss Misery" on the Good Will Huntingsoundtrack) with the knowledge that someone'll call him a poseur or worse for doing so with Jeffrey Katzenberg's name on his paycheck. Figure 8features a handful of the delicate, spare ballads that became Smith's trademark, but damned if they're not designer imposters. With "Easy Way Out" and "Somebody I Used to Know" he's not only rehashing old melodies, "No Name #5" and "I Don't Think I'm Ever Going To Figure It Out," respectively, but also watering down his commentary. He used to tell stories like an articulate street-sleeper with an eye for the tragic. Now, with "There's a silver lining / On the corporate cloud," from "Wouldn't Mama Be Proud," and the insipid "If patience started a band / I'd be her biggest fan," from "L.A.," he's Alanis Morrisette with worse metaphors.
Worse yet, Smith, who's art consisted of letting others watch him fall, has found a wobbly crutch. With Dreamworks and Abbey Road Studios on his side, he's bulking up the arrangements-side of things to strengthen flaccid material. "Son of Sam," a meandering tune on which Smith aligns himself with "the couple killer," appeared early this year in an acoustic version as a B-side to "Happiness," Figure 8's first single. What a mistake; a new, lavishly produced version of it that kicks off Figure 8 suggests that Smith realized he had subpar material and, instead of reworking it thematically, hid his mess under a 30-piece orchestra. On "Everything Means Nothing to Me," he's not even the dominant element — instead, big-ass, Flaming Lips-style drums march in and steal the show while Smith is reduced to a mechanical vocal loop.
The beef with petty loathers is that they're afraid of their sentimental sides, the part that makes them human and vulnerable. And Smith's got one, even though it only shows through his persona as "The Gondola Man" — steering the ship, documenting in third person the tragic, romantic trials of its passengers, interjecting his Hallmark-card punchline at the chorus and sacrificing self-righteousness for transcendence. He uses it sparingly, such as on his staple singles "Waltz #2" from 1998's XOor "Ballad of Big Nothing" from 1996's Either/Or, and it only pops up within Figure 8, coincidentally, on "Happiness." Nothing chic about it; it's a grin-and-bear-it, slice-of-life anthem — his "Come Together." Right now. Over his sulking ass.
If he doesn't want to explore that side of music-making any more, fine. But we'd be losing one helluva cynical conscience before it ever proved worthy to be our guide.
So yeah, Elliott Smith, break out of this cyclic shell. If not for me, then for beekeeper cheerleaders.
- Tony Stasiek
