Coming Up Roses

The trickiest Elliott Smith song to recommend to newcomers precisely because its musical surface — a rolling, almost buoyant acoustic rhythm with a melodic lift that suggests optimism — sits in sharp contrast to lyrics soaked in irony and failed hope. The strumming has momentum, a kind of forward propulsion that the words actively resist, and that friction is the entire point. Smith understood that despair delivered over a pretty tune lands harder than despair over minor-key dirges. His vocals here are less hushed than on the Roman Candle recordings, slightly more projected, though still conversational rather than performative. The song belongs to the mid-nineties American indie folk-rock moment — Sebadoh, Smog, Palace Brothers were all working similar territory — but Smith's melodic gift separated him. There's a particular kind of person who discovers this song during a period when things are outwardly fine but inwardly not, and it becomes a private anthem. Put it on a walk where you need to keep moving but also need to acknowledge that something isn't working.