When listening to an artist’s final or posthumous album, it’s easy to see some special meaning or prediction of death within the songs and lyrics that isn’t really there. This is especially true with musicians who killed themselves, like Kurt Cobain or Elliott Smith, where every word could be read as a clue or a cry for help.
Yet those who do so with Elliott Smith’s final album, “From a Basement on the Hill,” ignore the fact that drugs, depression and lost love have always colored his songs. “From a Basement” is Elliott Smith’s transition album between his mostly acoustic early career and the fleshed-out arrangements of his major-label records “XO and Figure 8,” which makes Smith’s death all the more tragic.
Unsure where he wanted his next album to go after “Figure 8,” Smith got permission from Dreamworks Records to shop the album around various indie labels. It ended up being released by Anti, an imprint for punk label Epitaph.
Smith’s return to an indie label is a fitting tribute to the stripped-down punk strum of his past works but is also misleading. “From a Basement” features some of Smith’s most complex arrangements and longest songs in his career, like the clanging opening track “Coast to Coast” and “Shooting Star”, which is six minutes long and full of complications. While the expansion is welcome on some songs, it’s sometimes a bit overwhelming and overbearing to the listener.
The acoustic songs fare much better under Smith’s expert touch. Most of these songs are longer than Smith typically writes, which allows him more space to spin his stories. These songs also feel more emotionally complex. We can hear the longing and sense of loss in his voice on “A Fond Farewell” and the giddy nostalgia that drives “Memory Lane.” Unencumbered by effects, it’s easier to sympathize and catch the ambivalence toward life, love and chemicals that pervade his lyrics.
The complexity comes partially from Smith’s growth as an artist and partially because of the album’s themes. Make no mistake, drugs, alcohol and depression haunt this album as they haunted Smith’s life and previous works. Song titles like “Strung Out Again” and lyrics like “All I want to do now is inject my ex-wife,” from “King’s Crossing,” are typical for much of the album. The word suicide gets mentioned once, but only to describe someone (“A little less than a suicide” from “A Fond Farewell”), and the line “Give me one reason not to do it” from “King’s Crossing” applies more to breaking up a relationship (and is immediately followed by “because I love you”).
The closing track of this album, “A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to Be Free,” serves as a manifesto and a microcosm for the album. It is simultaneously an admission of the necessity of altered states of consciousness and a brutal kiss-off to those who’d think negatively of that. A more bitter and disappointing version of a song that first appeared as the B-side to a single first released in 2003, the track’s anger makes it stand apart from previous Elliott Smith album closers, which traded both in melancholy and hope.
Like “A Distorted Reality,” “From a Basement” ultimately feels unresolved: There’s plenty of beauty and quality within the album, but it’s obvious Smith wasn’t quite sure where he was going or what he was going to do next.
