If I can get Splendid's editor to pay for the ticket, I'm more than willing to jump on the next plane to Los Angeles, make the drive over to the Dreamworks Records offices and then proceed to kiss each and every employee, most likely starting with Mo Ostin, and thank them for any part that they may have had in releasing Figure 8. I'd buy the ticket myself if all my funds weren't already committed to my daughter (and buying a new iMac). Why would I want to buss 100 or 150 people, you might ask? It's a simple answer - after 30 some odd listens, I'm still giddy as fuck with this record. Mr Smith has created a wonderful album. Think of Figure 8 as the work of a boy who took the big, 64 crayon box of Crayola's and made new colors that Crayola never thought possible.
Ask me to make a case for an artist signing to a major label and I'll give you Elliott Smith. With two albums released so far and nary a word to the contrary, Smith is seemingly happy with Dreamworks, and they seem happy with him. This is a good thing. If a major label is going to throw money at an artist and at studio costs, Dreamworks lucked out with Smith. Either/Or, Smith's last album for Kill Rock Stars, was not a low-fi, delicate flower like his earliest releases. On that record, Smith began dressing his songs in layers of melodic bass and shimmering drums. But nothing on Either/Or can equal the feeling that I got the first time I heard "Sweet Adeline", the lead track from XO, Smith's Dreamworks debut. With that song, Smith put every listener on notice that he was moving further into the beauty that pop music can be -- with no small thanks to Dreamworks' deep pockets.
Figure 8 is XO done with fresh tubes of watercolors and fine hair brushes versus pastels. For proof, skip ahead to "Happiness". After you listen to it seven or eight times, try and think of a time in the past month when you felt happier about being a human being and being able to love someone else. Or don't skip any tracks and start right at "Son of Sam". You might feel guilty about smiling over a song that contains references to a serial killer, but don't be. It's the way his voice bends in the background, over a blend of guitars and organ, that's the cause.
Figure 8 has a different tone than the other Smith releases. I can't place a finger on it exactly, but there's a new sense of hopefulness in the lyrics and the melodies. I've never thought that Smith was especially glum -- just brutally honest about how people act with themselves and the people they care about. Yet a fable like "Everything Means Nothing to Me" (it's almost the exact opposite in feeling from its title) could never have been on a previous release. And when the guitar churns and tears into the fabric on "LA", it's not a menacing sound, but the sound of someone shedding skin for something better.
Figure 8 is magnificent pop music, and you would have to kill me to get back any of the time I've spent -- and plan to spend -- listening to it.
