It was a show at Northwestern University. The next time I saw him, he was opening for Wilco in, like, 2002, right when Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out. It was just a three-piece box combo, but I remember thinking the set was really short, like, 45 minutes and they were out. What was that like, seeing him live? The first time was on the Either/Or tour at the Metro in Chicago. I saw him live, and his voice sounded the same as it did on the records. He actually is phenomenal and hit the notes really well.

He kind of gets thought of as an unnatural singer, but I think he had a great voice. “I remember turning to my wife-my girlfriend at the time-and saying, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s gone in a year.’ And it was a few months later he passed.”Īnything about his style that influenced you? I think his tone of voice was inspiring to a lot of people. 'King's Crossing' is one of my favorite Elliott Smith songs. I like those two, I like Figure 8, and I even like his posthumous album. Both of those records had an enormous influence on me. And so we started exchanging tapes, and he gave me a tape with some Elliott Smith on it. This was the fledgling days of the Internet, and I somehow made friends with a guy who ran a Nick Drake fan site. When was the first time you heard Elliott Smith? It was his second album, the self-titled one. 'I think part of the powerful connection his music makes with fans is due to the focus required to really understand it.' We talked to Holmes about the album's legacy and parallels to American Football's own seminal emo-rock album. 'He's definitely in my top five artists of all time,' he says. So it makes sense that Steve Holmes, American Football's guitarist, is an enormous fan of Elliott Smith's.

However, both acts connected with fans through their ability to communicate real pain, sadness, and the occasional dose of hope through their music. The music of American Football and Elliott Smith can both be lumped under the umbrella of 'emo rock.' But the ways they approached the genre couldn't be more different: While American Football's music started as an extension of the hardcore scene, Smith-the late artist whose album Either/Or turned 20 years old on February 25-channeled ’60s-era pop melodies and chord progressions of the Beatles and Beach Boys.

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