H E A R__I T

"Angeles"
- Elliott Smith
(640k)

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T A B L E__T A L K

What were the best and worst albums of 1997? Cast your vote in the Music section of Table Talk.

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R E C E N T L Y

Various Artists
Jackie Brown, Original Soundtrack
A Band Apart/Maverick
(12/22/97)

Fruitcake music
Andrei Codrescu
Valley of Christmas
Gert Town Records
(12/19/97)

Anonymous 4
11,000 Virgins
Sequentia
O Jerusalem
Tapestry
Celestial Light
(12/18/97)

Ivy
Apartment Life
Atlantic
(12/17/97)

Fiona Apple, Live at the Warfield
San Francisco
Sunday, December 14, 1997
(12/16/97)

BROWSE THE
MUSIC ARCHIVES

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V O W E L L

Sound Salvation
By Sarah Vowell
Survey says ...
Give the people what they want
(12/12/97)

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F E A T U R E

Paint it black
By David Bowman
A prayer for His Holy Hipness, Johnny Cash
(12/05/97)

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_______v a r i o u s__a r t i s t s

"GOOD WILL HUNTING" SOUNDTRACK_
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BY CYNTHIA JOYCE
These days in indie rock, it seems, there are so many clever ways to obscure talent (or, just as often, the lack thereof) -- dissonant chords, deliberately jarring tempo changes, phrases that refuse to resolve -- that cultivating that cunning skill is as likely to earn you as much credibility as you'd get for actually knowing how to craft a good song. How is it, then, that something as simple as good guitar playing and an earnestly on-key singing voice has elevated post-punk rocker Elliott Smith to the status of music industry Buzz Boy? Smith's last two solo efforts, 1995's self-titled CD and this year's "Either/Or," placed him on many critics' top 10 lists. At least one major label has attempted to sign him, and indie rockers such as his Kill Rock Stars labelmate Mary Lou Lord are clamoring to cover his tunes (Lord includes her version of "I Figured You Out," a song Smith threw out after performing it once, on her "Mind the Gap" EP). Now fellow former Portland dweller Gus Van Sant, Smith's nearest equivalent in the world of independent film, has featured six of Smith's songs on the soundtrack to his new film, "Good Will Hunting."

Smith had been playing to sold-out clubs up and down the West Coast last summer when he mysteriously disappeared from the bill advertising him as Beck's opening act in San Francisco. Although the official word was that he was suffering from fatigue, there was a ripple of panic among fans. Familiar with his heroin-laced lyrics and his drug-using past as a member of the band Heatmiser, many feared that Smith might have followed too closely in the footsteps of Nick Drake and Kurt Cobain, to whom he is often compared. While it's true that Smith's music does sound like a cross between the two -- like Drake, Smith prefers light, nimble melodies to thundering ones, and his lyrics, which are arresting and acerbic as often as they are beautiful, bring to mind the understated intensity and raw emotional power of Cobain -- Smith seems to have learned something from the histories of his late predecessors. Unlike Drake, who desperately wanted recognition, and Cobain, who collapsed under the weight of his own success, Smith has thus far managed to avoid the predicament of either position, reserving the right to release his debut album, 1994's "Roman Candle" -- as well as two subsequent albums -- on an independent label, even after his former band had signed to Virgin.

Some critics have dismissed Smith as depressing and one-dimensional. But if his music lacks dramatic dynamics, it's the heartbreaking turns of phrase that add emotional depth to the songs. Like most confessions, these are best heard when whispered, not shouted. Hearing him make promises to himself on "Angeles" -- "Thinking about how to stay/out of trouble's way/trying to fall/away from you all" -- and to someone else on "Between the Bars" -- "The people that you've been before/that you don't want around anymore/ they push and they shove and won't bend to your will/ I'll keep them still" -- it's clear that his stories are not so much about despair and loneliness as about not being able to find solitude.

Fans accustomed to Smith's spare sound might be surprised by the three-part harmonies and Danny Elfman's sweeping orchestral arrangements found here on an abridged version of "Between the Bars" (from "Either/Or"). Still, it's fun to hear the schmaltzy potential of the song taken to its extreme, and there's no stranger bedfellow than Elfman to take it there.

"Good Will Hunting" benefits from the inclusion of several other tracks as well, most notably the Waterboys' buoyant "Fisherman's Blues," one of the best sail-away-into-the-sunset songs of all time; the Dandy Warhols' "Boys Better"; and newcomer Jeb Loy Nichols' twangy "As the Rain." There's a weird late-'70s/early-'80s interlude featuring Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" and Andru Donalds' hyper-honkified version of Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby" that are both in keeping with the rest of the album's I-Only-Want-What-I-Can't-Have theme. And although there's only one really weak spot -- Luscious Jackson's "Why Do I Lie?" with its annoyingly tidy rhymes ("Why do I lie/is it just to get by/if I don't will I lay down and die?") -- it's too bad that the new Capitol/Miramax joint venture, which requires a presence on the CD for Capitol artists, left so little room for Smith's songs, most of them taken from "Either/Or." If "Miss Misery" -- the one song Smith penned specifically for the film -- is any indication, a complete Van Sant/Smith collaboration could have resulted in the best single-artist soundtrack since "The Graduate," or at least since David O. Russell used Morphine's entire "Cure for Pain" album as the soundtrack for his film "Spanking the Monkey." Without Smith's songs, the "Good Will Hunting" soundtrack would have been little more than the sum of a cross-marketing agreement's parts.
SALON | Dec. 23, 1997