But just before the final cut, Smith decided not to include the album’s title track in the song list. Smith burned through those thirteen tracks about as quickly and efficiently as possible. The drums on album opener ‘Speed Trials’ sound like shoeboxes banged against the floor, but by the midpoint of ‘No Name No. ‘Cupids Tricks’ and ‘2:45’, strategically placed at the end of the album, seem to point towards the future arrangements of albums like XO and Figure 8. When they did, it was Smith himself playing all of the instruments.
Very few tracks expand beyond Smith’s basic setup. ‘Pictures of Me’ is a prickly indictment on public image, with Smith grousing that, “Everybody’s dying just to get the disease.” Upon getting invited to the eponymous ‘Rose Parade’, Smith insist: “When they clean the street, I’ll be the only shit that’s left behind.” Already gaining a reputation for sad-sack lyrics, Smith never let rubberneckers impede on his incisive word crafting or his often brutally dark honesty. Tellingly, Smith seems to be aware that people were paying attention to him on Either/Or, perhaps for the first time. It’s not his most charming or audacious record, but it could very well be his best. Sitting at the immediate end of Smith’s lo-fi origins and right before his lush, major label album crafting that took over his final records, Either/Or is the platonic ideal of an Elliott Smith record. Most tracks featured only an additional guitar overdub to compliment Smith’s fingerpicked acoustic and whisper-thin vocal delivery. Bouncing between Portland studios, some professional and some in friends’ basements, Smith gathered up thirteen acoustic tracks that could be recorded quickly after Heatmiser’s dissolution. The answer was by going on unemployment, recording in houses, and focusing on his songwriting. That quiet co-frontman already had two studio albums to his name, but he also had recently lost his job at a bakery. Gust’s ‘Rest My Head Against the Wall’ and Smith’s ‘See You Later’ probably could have been hits on 120 Minutes, if not for the fact that Heatmiser imploded before the album even saw its release date. That’s not because they had bad material – in fact, the band’s final album, 1996’s Mic City Sons, has fantastic tracks on it. They probably couldn’t have even been the next Silverchair. Could Heatmiser be the next Nirvana? No shot in hell.
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