well, it's apparently crap weather time here in the nation's capital. it normally happens like this: we regularly get a brilliant couple of fall weeks, which eventually fade into a pallid gray sky, drizzling rain, and dropping temperatures, until we get a potentially dreadful winter that doesn't let up until april.

hurray!

it's this kind of gray, dreary weather that makes it seem like you're constantly walking underwater that always, every year, inspires me to listen to depressing music. and elliott smith is constantly at the top of my Favorite Musicians Who Make Me Feel Like I Want to Die, or At Least Sleep and Cry Hysterically All Day.

mr. smith has been one of my favorite singers since high school. yes, i jumped on the "good will hunting" bandwagon, but i have stuck persistently by his side ever since. i wrote terrible, florid, teenage articles about how much i loved him. i traveled from charlottesville to d.c. and back in one night to see him in concert. i drank wine and felt artistically melancholy while listening to "between the bars" over and over again. and it literally hurt my heart when i read that he had committed suicide almost a year ago today.

in no small matter of timing, smith's new album, "from a basement on a hill", was recently released. apparently it had almost been finished at the time of his death, and a couple of close friends (one of whom is that female bassist from the jicks that tommy thinks is hot) helped master and arrange the tracks.

i haven't yet bought the album, but my dad has been emailing me several articles that review it. unsuprisingly, most of the pieces, which are largely positive, contain grandiloquent and flowery remarks on elliott's death and music (it's always seemed funny that no one, including myself, can write about elliott smith's music, which is at its heart very simple and unaffected, without sounding like a bombastic idiot).

i'll certainly buy the record soon, but one thing that i pray and hope doesn't happen is that elliott smith's memory and music get turned into the huge, unneccessary whoredom that is jeff buckley's legacy. buckley has been dead for seven years; every scrap of everything that he's ever half-assedly recorded has been put out; and his live performances have been repackaged over and over again. there's a difference between honoring a musician's works and exploiting them. i understand that it can be difficult to let go of the memory and brilliance of a musician who died in their artistic prime, but at some point, it has to happen. or you lessen the intensity of everything they put out while they were alive.