Elliott Smith - Figure 8

On Figure 8, Elliott Smith took songs that could have survived with nothing more than voice and guitar and built an entire Technicolor world around them.

Originally released in 2000, Figure 8 was Smith’s fifth studio album and the second following his move to DreamWorks. After the increasingly elaborate arrangements of XO, he pushed even further outward, working again with Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock while recording across studios including Sunset Sound, Capitol, and Abbey Road. The result was his most expansive record yet, full of layered guitars, piano, strings, stacked harmonies, and flashes of orchestral pop without losing the intimacy at the center of his songwriting.

“Son of Sam” opens with acoustic guitar before blooming into a densely arranged pop song, while “Junk Bond Trader” and “L.A.” demonstrate how forceful Smith could sound when surrounded by a full band. At the opposite extreme, “Everything Reminds Me of Her” and “I Better Be Quiet Now” retain the bruised intimacy of his earlier work. “Everything Means Nothing to Me,” “Happiness,” and the towering “Can’t Make a Sound” reveal just how ambitious his arrangements had become.

The influence of The Beatles and late-’60s studio pop is unmistakable, but Figure 8 never feels like pastiche. Smith uses that vocabulary to enlarge his own world, setting intricate chord changes and deceptively beautiful melodies against lyrics filled with frustration, isolation, dependency, and the uneasy push between self-destruction and escape.

This 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition gives that world even more room to unfold. The original 16-track album is spread across two LPs, while a third LP adds seven bonus tracks, including “Figure 8,” “A Living Will,” acoustic versions of “Son of Sam” and “Happiness,” an alternate “Pretty Mary K,” “I Can’t Answer You Anymore,” and Smith’s haunting rendition of The Beatles’ “Because.” The deluxe program appears on vinyl here for the first time, mastered by Justin Perkins at Mystery Room Mastering with lacquers cut by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound.

Figure 8 would become the final Elliott Smith album released during his lifetime. Twenty-five years later, it remains one of his defining achievements: intricate, melodic, emotionally devastating, and proof that making his music bigger never made it any less personal.