I listened to Elliott Smith's eponymously titled album last night before sleep. It's one of those albums creates an almost suffocatingly intimate atmosphere; his pronunciation of the lyrics, every syllable almost, (especially in Needle in the Hay) give the impression he is undergoing a kind of self-exorcism. The swearing seems so sincere that you want to join in and the extreme minimalism of the production only serves to reinforce this tension. The world is out to screw you up, it says; and who am I to disagree with that?