A sound so delicate: who produced Elliott Smith?
The story of Elliott Smith is one as haunting as his music. One that can’t help but be tragic no matter how much the man would hate that level of mythologising. It’s true, though; a cursory glance through his life is one that unblinkingly undoes everything we think we know about self-destructive musicians. For that reason, it’s grimly fitting that the indie label the man born Steven Smith got his start as a solo artist at was called Kill Rock Stars.
His story is a sobering reminder that there is nothing romantic or beautiful about untreated mental or physical health conditions. Nothing counterculture about addictions stemming from unspoken trauma. It’s just an intensely sad waste of a once-in-a-generation talent. One of the most affecting aspects of Smith’s discography is his record’s uncanny ability to reflect that in its very sound.
Not just in Smith’s songwriting, either, although his mastery of a mournfully beautiful melody was basically unmatched. Whether it’s his hushed, singer-songwriter beginnings or the more fleshed-out power-pop of Figure 8 or XO, the albums themselves were produced and engineered in a way that gave space to Smith’s delicate voice while still embellishing his songs with enough hooks to make his beloved Beatles proud.
While Smith is a credited producer on his own records, there are two other names that helped bring them to life. That of Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock. Two names you might not be familiar with, but you’ll almost certainly be familiar with their work. The duo met while working menial jobs at the legendary LA Studio Record Plant, and by 1990, had teamed up to form the marvellously named Bong Load Records.
Among their first releases was a baffling little number that Rothrock in particular was a whole lot more convinced by than the artist himself, who was just embarrassed by this bizarre, slide guitar lead rap track called ‘Loser’. Rothrock forced the issue though, and it turned out pretty well for Beck in the end. The duo would spend the rest of the 1990s as part of Beck’s production team, their label putting out his albums well into the 2000s.
Their work with the alternative rock scene in the mid-1990s got them a gig working on the soundtrack to 1997’s Robin Williams tear-jerker Good Will Hunting. A picture which features a number of Elliott Smith numbers, including the Oscar-nominated ‘Miss Misery’. The trio hit it off, and since Smith was looking to expand his sound beyond this hushed, singer-songwriter tropes of his debut, he tapped them up to work on his upcoming album Either/Or.
The move proved successful, even though Smith’s sound was a little too esoteric for the international stardom his Oscar buzz briefly threatened. The record would go on to be Smith’s highest-selling effort, and he secured a record deal with Dreamworks shortly after for his follow-up, 1998’s XO, for which he’d retain Rothrock and Schnapf as co-producers. One record in, and Smith, ever the perfectionist, had found collaborators he could trust and wasn’t going to let them go that easily.
The duo would go on to work on each of Smith’s remaining albums. Contributing to a singular sound that, even though both would go on to lead celebrated production careers in their own right, it’s arguable that they never bettered.
