{"id":3153,"date":"2015-03-30T12:40:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T19:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/?p=3153"},"modified":"2015-03-30T12:40:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T19:40:04","slug":"revisiting-the-music-of-elliott-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2015\/03\/revisiting-the-music-of-elliott-smith.html","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting the Music of Elliott Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=&#8221;pSiNhPLxRicBfP3m18tXkhFjYiIy7Uxc&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>THE other day I almost froze as I heard a song coming out of the radio that sounded both fresh and eerily familiar. It turned out to be a song from the new Elliott Smith tribute by Seth Avett &#8212; guitarist for the rustic, North Carolina-based Avett Brothers &#8212; and the indie\u00a0singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield.<\/p>\n<p>The song &#8212; &#8220;Somebody I Used to Know,&#8221; a great and mournful break-up song that is here filled out and remade &#8212; made me think these songs were more flexible, and less dependent on Elliott&#8217;s own story, than I used to think. His first biographer, Ben Nugent, pointed out to me that these songs are <em>not<\/em> diary entries: They are personal, but also as crafted as something by Dylan or Joni Mitchell.<\/p>\n<p>Some, including some friends of mine, disagree, and think these songs don&#8217;t translate, or that they are too tied up in Smith&#8217;s untimely death. Hearing Avett and Mayfield just now on KCRW <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3154\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/sajlm_07-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"sajlm_07\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/sajlm_07-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/sajlm_07.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>reminded me of how much I love their versions of &#8220;Between the Bars,&#8221; &#8220;Big Nothing,&#8221; and so on.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Avett\/Elliott video\" href=\"%20http:\/\/youtu.be\/QyqhAch-B-Q \" target=\"_blank\">Here<\/a>\u00a0is a video of the two playing and talking about the project. They&#8217;re at the Wilshire Ebell in LA Tuesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=&#8221;pSiNhPLxRicBfP3m18tXkhFjYiIy7Uxc&#8221;] THE other day I almost froze as I heard a song coming out of the radio that sounded both fresh and eerily familiar. It turned out to be a song from the new Elliott Smith tribute by Seth Avett &#8212; guitarist for the rustic, North Carolina-based Avett Brothers &#8212; and the indie\u00a0singer-songwriter Jessica [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[66,103,40,30],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-alt-country","7":"category-elliott-smith","8":"category-indie","9":"category-los-angeles","10":"entry","11":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3155,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions\/3155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}