1991–1996: Heatmiser In 1991, Smith graduated from
Hampshire College in
Amherst, Massachusetts with a degree in
philosophy and
political science. "Went straight through in four years", he explained to
Under the Radar in 2003. "I guess it proved to myself that I could do something I really didn't want to for four years. Except I did like what I was studying. At the time it seemed like, 'This is your one and only chance to go to college and you had just better do it because some day you might wish that you did.' Plus, the whole reason I applied in the first place was because of my girlfriend, and I had gotten accepted already even though we had broken up before the first day." After Smith graduated from Hampshire, the band added drummer
Tony Lash and bassist
Brandt Peterson and began performing around Portland in 1992. The group released the albums
Dead Air (1993) and
Cop and Speeder (1994), as well as the
Yellow No. 5 EP (1994) on
Frontier Records. Around this time, Smith and Gust worked a number of odd jobs around Portland, including installing drywall, spreading gravel, transplanting bamboo trees, and painting the roof of a warehouse with heat reflective paint. The pair were also on unemployment benefits for some time, which they considered an "artist grant". Smith had begun his solo career while still in Heatmiser, and the success of his first two releases created distance and tension with his band.
1994: Roman Candle In the early 1990s, Smith's girlfriend at the time convinced him to send a tape of songs he had recently recorded on a borrowed
four-track to
Cavity Search Records. One of Smith's first solo performances was in Portland at the now-defunct Umbra Penumbra on September 17, 1994. Only three songs from
Roman Candle were performed, with the majority of the ten-song set being
B-sides, Heatmiser tunes and unreleased tracks. The same year, Smith released a split 7-inch record with Pete Krebs via Slo-Mo Records, contributing the track "
No Confidence Man".
1995–1997: Elliott Smith and Either/Or In 1995, Smith's
self-titled album was released on
Kill Rock Stars; the record featured a style of recording similar to
Roman Candle, but with hints of growth and experimentation. Though the majority of the album was recorded by Smith alone, friend and
The Spinanes vocalist Rebecca Gates sang harmony vocals on "St. Ides Heaven", and Heatmiser guitarist
Neil Gust played guitar on "Single File". Several songs made reference to drugs, but Smith explained that he used the theme of drugs as a vehicle for conveying dependence rather than the songs being about drugs specifically. Looking back, Smith felt that the album's pervasive mood gave him "a reputation for being a really dark, depressed person" and said that he later made a conscious move toward more diverse moods in his music. In 1996, filmmaker
Jem Cohen recorded Smith playing acoustic songs for the short film
Lucky Three: An Elliott Smith Portrait. Two of these songs would appear on his next album
Either/Or, which was another Kill Rock Stars release.
Either/Or came out in 1997 to favorable reviews. The album found Smith venturing further into full instrumentation, with several songs containing bass guitar, drums, keyboards, and electric guitars, all played by Smith. The album title was derived from the two-volume
book of the same name by Danish philosopher
Søren Kierkegaard, whose works generally deal with themes such as
existential despair,
angst, death, and God. By this time, Smith's already-heavy drinking was being compounded with use of antidepressants. At the end of the
Either/Or tour, some of his close friends staged an intervention in Chicago,
1997–1998: "Miss Misery" and Academy Award nomination In 1997, Smith was selected by director and fellow Portland resident
Gus Van Sant to be a part of the soundtrack to his film
Good Will Hunting. Smith recorded an orchestral version of "Between the Bars" with composer
Danny Elfman for the film. Smith also contributed a new song, "Miss Misery", and three previously released tracks ("No Name #3", from
Roman Candle, and "Angeles" and "Say Yes", from
Either/Or). The film was a commercial and critical success, and Smith was nominated for an
Academy Award for "Miss Misery". Not eager to step into the limelight, he agreed to perform the song at the ceremony only after the producers informed him that if he was unwilling to perform, they would choose someone else to play it. A few days later, wearing a white suit, he played an abridged version at the Academy Awards ceremony, accompanied by the house orchestra. Smith did not voice disappointment about not winning. He described the experience as surreal, and said: "The Oscars was a very strange show, where the set was only one song cut down to less than two minutes, and the audience was a lot of people who didn't come to hear me play. I wouldn't want to live in that world, but it was fun to walk around on the moon for a day."
1998–2000: XO and Figure 8 In 1998, after the success of
Either/Or and "Miss Misery", Smith signed to a bigger record label,
DreamWorks Records. Around the same time, Smith fell into depression, speaking openly of considering suicide, While in North Carolina, he became severely intoxicated and ran off a cliff. He landed on a tree, which badly impaled him but broke his fall. It was produced by the team of
Rob Schnapf and
Tom Rothrock.
XO also contained some instrumentation from Los Angeles musicians
Joey Waronker and
Jon Brion. It contained a more full-sounding,
baroque pop sound than any of his previous efforts, with songs featuring a horn section,
Chamberlins, elaborate
string arrangements, and even a
drum loop on the song "Independence Day". His familiar double-tracked vocal and acoustic guitar style were still apparent while his somewhat personal lyrical style survived. The album went on to peak at number 104 on the
Billboard 200 and number 123 on the UK Album Charts, while selling 400,000 copies (more than double that of each of his two Kill Rock Stars releases), becoming the best-selling release of his career. Smith's backing band during most of this period was the Portland-based group
Quasi, consisting of former bandmate
Sam Coomes on bass guitar and Coomes's ex-wife
Janet Weiss on drums. Quasi also performed as the opening act at many shows on the tour, with Smith sometimes contributing bass guitar, guitar, or backing vocals. On October 17, 1998, Smith appeared on
Saturday Night Live and performed "
Waltz No. 2 (XO)". His backing band for this appearance was
John Moen,
Jon Brion,
Rob Schnapf, and
Sam Coomes. In response to whether the change to a bigger record label would influence his creative control, Smith said, "I think despite the fact that sometimes people look at major labels as simply money-making machines, they're actually composed of individuals who are real people, and there's a part of them that needs to feel that part of their job is to put out good music." Smith also claimed in another interview that he never read his reviews for fear that they would interfere with his songwriting. It was during this period that Smith appeared on Dutch television in 1998 and provided a candid interview in which he spoke of his assessment of his music career until that point: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I mostly only know things are different because people ask me different questions, but I don't feel like things are very changed. I mean, I still, I do the same things that I did before … I think about the same things, so … I'm the wrong kind of person to be really big and famous. As part of the Dutch television special, Smith played live versions of "Waltz No. 2 (XO)", "Miss Misery", and "I Didn't Understand"—the latter two songs were performed solely on piano, while the first song was cut short by Smith, as he explained: "I had to stop it because it's… you know, what's the point of playing a song badly? It'd be better to play it and mean it, than to just walk through it." He also performed in Toronto in April that year. In the fall, his cover of
the Beatles' "Because" was featured in the end credits of DreamWorks' Oscar-winning drama
American Beauty, and appeared on the film's soundtrack album.
Figure 8, the final album Smith completed, was released on April 18, 2000. It featured the return of Rothrock, Schnapf, Brion, and Waronker and was partially recorded at
Abbey Road Studios in England, with an obvious Beatles influence in the songwriting and production. The album garnered favorable reviews, and peaked at number 99 on the
Billboard 200 However, some reviewers felt that Smith's trademark dark and melancholy songwriting had lost some of its subtlety, with one reviewer likening some of the lyrics to "the self-pitying complaints of an adolescent venting in his diary". Album art and promotional pictures from the period showed Smith looking cleaned-up and put-together. An extensive tour in promotion of the record ensued, book-ended by television appearances on ''
Late Night with Conan O'Brien and the Late Show with David Letterman''. However, Smith's condition began to deteriorate as he had become addicted to heroin either towards the end of or just after the
Figure 8 tour. A follow-up to Smith's 2000 album was originally planned to happen with
Rob Schnapf, but their sessions were abandoned. Smith also began distancing himself from manager Margaret Mittleman, who had handled him since the
Roman Candle days. Their friendship promptly ended, and Smith scrapped all of their work until that point. He later said "There was even a little more than half of a record done before this new one that I just scrapped because of a blown friendship with someone that made me so depressed I didn't want to hear any of those songs. He was just helping me record the songs and stuff, and then the friendship kind of fell apart all of a sudden one day. It just made it kind of awkward being alone in the car listening to the songs."
Steven Drozd of
The Flaming Lips and Scott McPherson of
Sense Field played a few drum tracks,
Sam Coomes contributed some bass guitar and backing vocals, but almost every other instrument was recorded by Smith. Smith's song "
Needle in the Hay" was included in
Wes Anderson's 2001 film
The Royal Tenenbaums during a suicide attempt scene. Smith was originally supposed to contribute a cover of The Beatles' "
Hey Jude" for the film, but when he failed to do so in time, Anderson had to use
The Mutato Muzika Orchestra's version of the track instead. Anderson would later say that Smith "was in a bad state" at the time. At another performance in San Francisco that month, the audience began shouting out lyrics when Smith could not remember them. In the first of only three concerts performed in 2002, Smith co-headlined Northwestern University's A&O Ball with
Wilco on May 2 in Chicago. He was onstage for nearly an hour but failed to complete half of the songs. He claimed that his poor performance was due to his left
hand having fallen asleep and told the audience it felt "like having stuff on your hand and you can't get it off". and an "excruciating […] nightmare". A reporter for the online magazine
Glorious Noise wrote, "It would not surprise me at all if Elliott Smith ends up dead within a year." On November 25, 2002, Smith was involved in a brawl with the Los Angeles Police Department at a concert where
The Flaming Lips and
Beck were performing. The officers allegedly beat and arrested him and girlfriend Jennifer Chiba. The two spent the night in jail. Smith's back was injured in the incident, causing him to cancel a number of shows.
2003: Reemergence and From a Basement on the Hill in January 2003. He played Knitting Factory & North Six in June 2003. Smith had attempted to go to rehab several times, but found that he was unable to relate to the popular treatments for people with substance use disorder who used a
twelve-step program basis for treatment. "I couldn't do the first step ... I couldn't say what you were supposed to say and mean it." On several songs, he was backed by a stripped-down drum kit played by Robin Peringer (of the band
764-HERO), and members of opening band
Rilo Kiley contributed backing vocals to one song. Near the end of the first show, the musician responded for several minutes after a heckler yelled "Get a backbone". Smith played two more Los Angeles concerts that year: The Derby in May 2003, and the
L.A. Weekly Music Awards in June 2003. After his 34th birthday on August 6, 2003, he gave up alcohol. Director
Mike Mills had been working with Smith during his final years and described Smith's troubles and apparent recovery: "I gave the script to him, then he dropped off the face of the earth ... he went through his whole crazy time, but by the time I was done with the film, he was making
From a Basement on the Hill and I was shocked that he was actually making music." With things improving for Smith after several troubled years, he began experimenting with
noise music and worked on his girlfriend Jennifer Chiba's
iMac with the intent of learning how to record with computers, noting that it was the only method with which he was still unfamiliar. He said "They're kind of more noisy with the pitch all distorted. Some are more acoustic, but there aren't too many like that. Lately I've just been making up a lot of noise."
Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing, a biography by
Benjamin Nugent, was rushed to publication shortly after
From a Basement on the Hill, shortly after the first anniversary of his death. Smith's family, as well as Joanna Bolme, Jennifer Chiba, Neil Gust,
Sam Coomes, and
Janet Weiss, all declined to be interviewed. It contained interviews with Rob Schnapf, David McConnell, and
Pete Krebs. The book received mixed reviews, with
Publishers Weekly remarking that while "Nugent manages to patch together the major beats of Smith's life, he can offer little meaningful insight". In 2005, a tribute album,
A Tribute to Elliott Smith, was released. It featured various bands performing tributes to Smith. On May 8, 2007, a posthumous compilation album,
New Moon, was released by Kill Rock Stars. It contained 24 songs recorded by Smith between 1994 and 1997 during his tenure with the label, songs that were not included on albums, as well as a few early versions and previously released B-sides. In the United States, the album debuted at number 24 on the
Billboard 200, selling about 24,000 copies in its first week. The record received favorable reviews and was Metacritic's 15th best-reviewed album of 2007. A portion of the proceeds from album sales were to go to
Outside In, a social service agency for low-income adults and homeless youth in Portland, Oregon. On October 25, 2007, a book titled
Elliott Smith was released by
Autumn de Wilde, which consists of photographs, handwritten lyrics, and "revealing talks with Smith's inner circle". De Wilde was responsible for the
Figure 8 sleeve art, making a landmark and de facto Smith memorial of the Solutions Audio mural. A five-song CD featuring previously unreleased live recordings of Smith performing acoustically at
Largo in Los Angeles was included in the release. Following Smith's death, his estate licensed his songs for use in film and television projects such as
One Tree Hill,
The Girl Next Door,
Georgia Rule, and
Paranoid Park. In a March 2009 interview, Larry Crane said that Smith's estate was defunct and all rights previously held by Smith are now in the control of his parents.
Roman Candle would be remastered by Larry Crane. A greatest hits compilation titled
An Introduction to... Elliott Smith was released in November 2010 by Domino Records (UK) and Kill Rock Stars (US). In August 2013, there was a memorial concert in Portland, Oregon, and three other cities. Attending the Portland show were several musicians Smith had performed with, friends, and an appearance by film director
Gus Van Sant. In 2014, the director
Paul Thomas Anderson posted a video of the pilot episode for a show called
The Jon Brion Show, featuring an acoustic set by Smith including accompaniment by Brion and pianist
Brad Mehldau. On July 17, 2015, a documentary about Smith's life titled
Heaven Adores You saw a limited theatrical release. The documentary enlisted a number of close friends and family members, as well as hours of audio interviews throughout Smith's short career. The film was directed by Nickolas Rossi and released through
Eagle Rock Entertainment.
Heaven Adores You received positive reviews from Consequence of Sound,
The Guardian, and
The Hollywood Reporter. On August 6, 2019 (what would have been Smith's 50th birthday),
UMe released digital deluxe editions of the two albums
XO and
Figure 8. The new edition of
XO has nine added tracks, including Smith's Oscar-nominated
Good Will Hunting song "Miss Misery". Seven tracks have been added to
Figure 8. The digital deluxe edition includes "Figure 8"—Smith's cover of the "Schoolhouse Rock!" song—which was originally released only on the Japanese edition of the album. The final track on the new
Figure 8 edition is Smith's cover of the Beatles' "Because", originally featured on the 1999
American Beauty soundtrack. == Death ==