your question

12/10/2019 ET phone home

I see you're into Elliott Smith. Any favorite albums? Do you think he lost something in shifting from solo acoustic home recordings to more fleshed out studio outings with big arrangements?

my answer

I quite like Figure 8 and XO. No, I don’t think he lost anything. I quite like the more produced songs. I think From A Basement on The Hill suffers from poor recordings and would have been a much better record with a more consistent sound. But, no, I don’t think he lost anything artistically.