Elliot Smith leaves a legacy of truth, eloquence, and melody

Let's face it: there are a lot of abysmal singer-songwriters out there. At every open mic night that a coffee shop hosts, there are at least ten people with a shaky voice, a meager handful of chords, and an abundance of bad poetry. The truly great singer-songwriter has become a rarity today: a diamond in the rough of teenage pretension and badly tuned guitars.

Which makes the recent death of Elliott Smith that much more tragic. Even at his worst, Smith was miles ahead of the singer-songwriter angst rabble. At his best, he was a contemporary nonpareil, a singer-songwriter whose work was worth a good listen.

To get an idea of what Elliott Smith sounded like, think if Simon and Garfunkel had used opiates instead of pot. Think of Cat Stevens without God. Think Nick Drake at his most lucid, Lennon at his most despondent. Think even of a less cloying James Taylor. Smith was the sum of all these parts.

Admittedly, the sound he cobbled together from these influences was not very divergent from its source material, but Smith's goal was never to revolutionize or even advance the singer-songwriter genre. Smith had always been an artist more concerned with airing his personal grievances -- his favorite themes were drug addiction and relationship problems -- in the form of poignant yet accessible songs.

Sadly, these personal grievances seemed to have been getting the best of Smith in recent years. According to an interview Smith did with Under the Radar magazine after finishing the tour for his latest album, the singer entered a drug rehab center to undergo a radical treatment for his long-standing addiction. But a series of cancelled and erratic shows after this treatment led many to believe that the singer was not entirely clean or emotionally stable. After witnessing one of Smith's shows in Los Angeles, a writer for Pitchfork Media, an on-line music magazine, said that he had never before been so concerned for an artist's well-being. On top of all this, Smith was having difficulties with the release of his new album, From a Basement on the Hill.

Whatever the cause of the singer's depression may have been, all that is currently certain is that on Monday, Smith was pronounced dead at Los Angeles County hospital from a self-inflicted stab wound to the chest. Smith was 34.

Born Steven Paul Smith on Aug. 6, 1969 in Omaha, Neb., Smith attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. before moving to Portland, Ore., to start his first serious band, Heatmiser, in the early '90s with college friends. By 1994, still an active member of Heatmiser, Smith had begun to release solo records under his own name, beginning with Roman Candle, followed by a self-titled album shortly thereafter.

Smith's earliest records owe the biggest debt to Nick Drake, whose quiet, ethereal ballads are the principal point of comparison here. Like Drake, Smith was able to tease out complex, melodic pop songs from a simple acoustic guitar. Also like Drake and other singer-songwriter forbearers, Smith was not afraid to let his saccharine voice carry just as much melody as his guitar.

With 1997's Either/Or, Smith's most consistent album, the singer's sound began to move away from Drake and towards Lennon. Filling in the space of previous releases with organ, piano, and vocal overdubs, Smith recorded an album that was less desolate but just as immediate.

The change in sound could not have come at a better time for Smith. The same year the singer was nominated for an Academy Award for "Miss Misery," one of his contributions to the Good Will Hunting soundtrack. The nomination and Smith's show-stopping performance of the song at the awards ceremony earned him a flood of new fans and even radio play.

With 1998's XO and 2000's Figure 8, Smith did not disappoint these newfound fans, releasing the most accessible records of his career. The Lennon influence was even more evident on these albums, which prominently featured orchestra-arrangements in addition to Smith's trusty guitar work. In fact, as much as Smith's sound had expanded, the songs always remained true to the style he made his own in earlier records.

There is a tendency to romanticize the life and work of artists who die prematurely. This is especially the case for rock stars, whose premature deaths are almost revered, viewed as a stamp of validation for the seriousness of their music. Certainly, Smith's songs -- which often dealt with suicide -- will be regarded differently from now on, but it would not be fair to reevaluate Smith's career as a whole in the wake of his death.

Simply put, the man wrote elegant, melancholy songs, no more, no less. As time will come to tell, this is an achievement that needs no exaggeration.