In that way, perhaps the greatest tribute that can be paid to ‘Either/Or’ is that even though it’s a quiet, introspective and weary album, never does it feel underfed.

Even when Smith elects to make his words to be unavoidable, as on the bare, regretful ‘Behind The Bars’, the subtle background instrumentation nourishes the song enough to ensure it remains welcoming.

Far from it, the acoustic-grunge aesthetic is filtered through a melodic Kinksian slink so that tracks like ‘Pictures Of Me’ or ‘Cupid’s Trick’, all sudden bursts of drums and leaping octaves alongside jaunty ’60s swing, can neatly sidestep the lyrical bitterness. Instead, like Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’ (released, coincidentally, the very same day 25 years earlier), it’s a downtrodden, quietly accepting, depressive record whose odes to unpretentiousness and sighing vignettes make it one of the most honest, relatable and beautiful pieces of pop music of its era.īut despite its stoically depressive milieu, ‘Either/Or’ is never a trudge. The two events are linked – Smith was nominated that night in the Best Original Song category for ‘Miss Misery’, one of a handful of songs that he had contributed to Good Will Hunting, which also featured four other songs from ‘Either/Or’ after director Gus van Sant had built the film’s soundtrack around it.īut if a journey from coffee shop gigs to the most watched Oscars broadcast in history in little over a year suggests a supernova success story, the reality becomes a little muddier when ‘Either/Or’ is the background music: this is not an album of ambition or dreaming, or even fist-shaking indignation at an unjust world.

Just over a year later, though, Elliott Smith was performing at the Oscars in a bright white suit, taking a bow between country superstar Trisha Yearwood and Celine Dion. ‘Either/Or’ crept out twenty years ago today on a relatively tiny, Portland-based indie record label, with no fanfare beyond a couple of good write-ups in the US underground music press.

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