Figure 8 (2000)

Figure 8 (2000)

On Figure 8, Smith builds his biggest room yet. On the posthumous follow-up, he’d stack the furniture to the roof, but here, there’s space for all his tricks. Firmly an Angeleno by now, he swapped out the tools in his lyrical kit. The bars, late hours and needles were gone; in their place were traffic cops, soldiers, nurses, actors: cinematic sketches of unnamed subjects. The pre-release featured a cartoony portrait from director Mike Mills on a field of garish orange, the color of a smoggy city sunset. For many, the essential Elliott would remain the misery dealer of the first few records. A film first boosted his national profile, and it would happen again in 2001, when Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay” was tabbed for a pivotal scene in The Royal Tenenbaums: Luke Wilson’s suicide attempt. It was a powerful combination, and its echoes burrowed their way into Smith’s catalog.

But he never sounded so confident as he does here. The sequencing is a bit careless — he alternates between exquisitely arranged pop/rock and delicate solo showcases — but it stems from an earned indulgence. He unfurls his melodies with aplomb, projecting power without diminishing the vulnerability. The garish, why-the-fuck-not approaches of XO’s “A Question Mark” and “Amity” are gone. So is the seething. What’s left is plenty: the sound of a man at full command of his powers, working the entire sound spectrum, hitting the intersection of touch and feel. His turns of phrase are executed crisply; his singular voice shows less strain than ever, even as Smith dispatches it to scale melodic mountains. And, suddenly, the songs soar to match: where there were once dropouts, now there are fearsome crescendos. More than perhaps any other artist, Smith found ways to suggest the Beatles, to glean from their fields without tainting his product. Figure 8 is lousy with vocal turnarounds, grace notes, stings and piano riffs adapted from the output of post-’66 Fabs. It’s incorporated as seamlessly as his prog roots and love of country weepers.

All this may sound spectacularly unimpressive: high-level competence and impersonal vignettes have not, typically, been the path to alt acclaim. But the songs are just that good. Not one overstays its welcome, and the longer cuts earn their runtime. “Happiness” was the first single, as beautiful an ode to passivity as you’ll ever hear. Intro’d on a lilting acoustic figure and plodding chord-change bass, backed by an organ that eerily mimics the human voice, Smith depicts a couple hiding from each other and the world. The climactic lines “What I used to be/ Will pass away and then you’ll see/ That all I want now/Is happiness for you and me” are nearly unbearably tender and resigned, buttressed with heavenly backing vocals and a two-note guitar figure that bawls like an ambulance siren. It is, essentially, his “Hey Jude,” the kind of concisely expressed worldview that most songwriters will never stumble upon. And here, he did it twice. “Can’t Make a Sound” begins with Smith and his acoustic, then opens up to include a yawning Harrison-esque figure. “Eyes locked and shining,” he keens, “Can’t you tell me/ What’s happening,” and suddenly, a frantically fanned electric cracks the sky. Strings work the chords as a host of Elliotts taunt the listener: “Why should you want any other/When you’re a world within a world?” At its best, Figure 8 is just that: an impeccably rendered headspace, a realm that brooks no exit.