Consisting mostly of brushed drums and wonderful surfy Bigsby (presumably Gretsch Country Gentleman?) guitar work, this nostalgic instrumental is a really rewarding piece of songwriting. The last track on Roman Candle sounds like the music for the end credits to your teenage years. It was angry, unnerving and mysterious, and he fucking detuned during the song.

I really hated ‘folk’ music at the time – I was heavily into Minutemen, fIREHOSE and Steely Dan – but this was a different kind of acoustic music. What hooked me initially about Roman Candle was the guitar playing, the insistent papery strumming and dissonant fizzy electric guitar quietly bubbling away. I’d heard Elliott before, but only Either/Or which I didn’t fully appreciate yet. I heard this when I was 16 at a friend’s house. Hope you enjoy these musings and I hope these songs inspire you to write as much as they inspired me. I recently organised Everybody Cares, an Elliott Smith tribute album featuring wonderful people like Marissa Nadler, Oceanator, Christian Lee Hutson and Martin Courtney to raise money for LBGTQ+ charities, which is available at. It’s not a highlight reel as there are plenty of those about, I just tried to write as if I was trying to convince myself to listen to these songs.

Here’s a vaguely chronological collection of songs of his that are particularly important to me. He seemed to speak a truth that no one else spoke, which resonated hard with my adolescent heart and still does today. Part of the team behind ‘Everybody Cares: An Elliott Smith Compilation’, Francis Lung takes us inside the beloved singer-songwriter’s catalogueĮlliott Smith’s music was a constant in my life between the ages of 16-20.

Elliott smith either or bandcamp