Elliott Smith//Angel in the Snow

I woke up today and looked out the window. A.’s back garden was white and sparkly. I’m not sure that this is the snowmageddon that everyone thought it would be, but it’s still pretty. On my way to the office (yeah, no snow day for me), even the decimated industrial swamp section of Jersey looked pretty. Now that takes a lot.

I hope that you’re at home and not at work. I hope you are putting on your boots, your long underwear and your snow pants to go sled or build snowmen or maybe make snow angels. I hope someone you love is going with you. I hope you are going to have hot chocolate with plenty of marshmallows after that. And I hope that you’ll snuggle into blankets with the heat as high as you want and watch your favorite movie again.

This is a song by late great Elliott Smith about love and snow angels. It’s a song about being in awe of someone or something. You must know what I’m talking about.



Angel in the Snow.mp3

I’m crushed out on the way you are.

Elliott Smith//Independence Day, Aimee Mann//4th of July

It’s a long summer holiday weekend, guys. You know what that means? Beaches and BBQs. You know what else? No post tomorrow. Instead, please accept this hearty double dose of sonic celebration.

Also, for those of you in NYC looking for another form of sonic celebration, fireworks are on the Hudson this year; not the East River.

There are an awful lot of songs about the Fourth of July. Here are two of my favorites:



Independence Day.mp3, Elliott Smith

4th of July.mp3, Aimee Mann

I’ll meet you hear tomorrow;
Independence Day.

*

Today’s the 4th of July.
Another June has gone by
And when they light up our town,
I just think,
What a waste of gunpowder and sky.

Elliott Smith//Baby Britain

It’s rainy. It’s dour. It’s Elliott Smith time.

I want to say that this is not my favorite Elliott Smith song because how can you have just one favorite Elliott Smith song? You can’t. What I will say about Baby Britain is that it holds giant significance for me namely because it was the first Smith song I ever heard, and as such, I consider it as a major gateway to the rest of the Smith cannon as well as a number of other artists I found through my enjoyment of Smith.

I can remember the exact moment when I first heard this. It was rainy and grey, just like today. It was likely 1999. I was sitting in the office of my parent’s house listening to WFUV, my middle school/early high school favorite radio station, on the antique radio that sounds all warm and sweet and old timey. This song came on and blew my mind.

When they announced that this was a new song from a new album by Elliott Smith, I remembered that my recent ex-boyfriend had been talking this dude up. I immediately went onto…wait for it...NAPSTER (don’t tell my parents I had NAPSTER installed on the home computer—are you guys reading this? I have no idea what I’m typing right now) and grabbed everything I could find, which was roughly six tracks, including a few from Roman Candle. I’m sure each track also took roughly five hours to download. YOU KIDS DON’T KNOW HOW GOOD YOU HAVE IT! I HAD TO TRUDGE THREE MILES TO SCHOOL IN THE SNOW AND USE DIAL-UP 56KB INTERNETS!!!!

Smith is a melodic genius and a lyrical craftsman whose bizarre and premature death made him into an indie rock legend. It sounds over-the-top, but I don’t think many would argue that each song and album he created in his too-short life was highly exceptional in its own way. Of course, this track follows suit.



Baby Britain.mp3

We knocked another couple back,
The dead soldiers lined up on the table,
Still prepared for an attack.
They didn't know they'd been disabled.