What the record is and where it came from
XO is Elliott Smith’s fourth solo album and his first for DreamWorks, released in 1998. Early work began with Larry Crane in Portland before sessions in Los Angeles with Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock. The new label context gave his songwriting a larger recorded setting.
How it sounds, and how it was made
Smith plays an extensive range of instruments, including guitars, piano, bass, drums and organ, and contributes string and horn arrangements. The production broadens the palette around the voice. Its scale makes melodic construction more conspicuous without requiring the singer to become a conventionally extroverted frontman.
What lands
“Waltz #2 (XO)” and “Baby Britain” are useful entrances into the album’s relationship between memorable melody and difficult feeling. The fuller arrangements show how much compositional ambition can exist inside writing often described primarily through intimacy. A larger recording can reveal that ambition rather than replace it.
What does not
Listeners attached to the earlier records’ sparseness may find the added instrumentation reduces their sense of proximity. Fourteen songs also ask for sustained attention to a fairly consistent emotional world. Attractive melodies can initially make the sharper implications of the words easier to overlook.
The ideas inside it
Intimacy is not simply a property of a small budget or a few instruments. It can survive a change in production when the writing and vocal perspective retain their particularity. The album asks listeners to distinguish a performer’s identity from the recording conditions under which they first encountered it.
Who should hear it, and who should not
Hear it if you enjoy carefully formed pop songs whose emotional implications are less comfortable than their melodies. It is less suited to an exclusive preference for voice-and-guitar austerity.
Is it worth your time
Yes. Hear the arrangements as part of Smith’s writing rather than decoration added around it; that makes the move into a larger studio setting easier to understand.
