Comments on: Decade :: Elliott Smith, Figure 8 (2000)

By: cino

cino — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:16:29 +0000

I love Waltz #1 from start to finish. The richness of the sound.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:20:17 +0000

Toward the end of happiness, when everything kicks in around the piano/acoustic guitar hook and his singing.
It’s the simplest little melody, but it feels so fucking good and terrible, optimistic and hopeless, a moment of resignation that hurts like hell but promises “hey, it’ll be okay,” and you don’t even need the vocals to know it. Elliott Smith could capture dichotomies like that better than anyone, I think.
Figure 8 is my favorite Elliott Smith album for the very reason you mentioned: he had access to everything he needed to build and shape the songs into whatever he wanted them to be, and proved that the possibilities were nearly endless.
Thanks again for a really wonderful, thoughtful synopsis.

By: schoppenaas

schoppenaas — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:28:14 +0000

Agree with you all, magic moments on a magnificent album… I also truly love the song ‘L.A.’, from start to finish

By: tom

tom — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:20:50 +0000

right on about his talents as an arranger/producer. My favorite part of the record is when things kick off in “Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud”…. when he sings “of the great pretender…I should sure think so.”

By: Kaley

Kaley — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:22:57 +0000

My favourite part is still the entire two minutes plus of “Somebody That I Used To Know” That song has always killed me, even though this is my least favouite album (I say that as a huge ES fan).