Elliott Smith

It's unavoidable that Elliott Smith's posthumous album is going to have an air of sadness around it, but the music itself is far from a sad affair: it's more like a White Album celebration, with a sympathetic ear turned toward the more unsteady moments. "Pretty (Ugly Before)" and "Strung Out Again" are highlights.

For many fans, Elliott Smith's greatest gift to the world was his sadness. He was thirty-four
when he died on October 21st, 2003, from two stab wounds to the chest. But the more we
learned about his death, the less we knew. For a while, everybody (including the police)
assumed it was suicide; then others started to suggest, ominously, that it wasn't, and a
coroner's report, issued last December, said the evidence was inconclusive. So... More >