Pitchfork

When it comes to suicide, critical hindsight is bullshit. Even the most sincere music is largely just performance, theatrical unreality crafted for maximum emotional impact. Unearthing clues to a beloved artist's depressive mindset through their creative output will always be a fruitless exercise. No laptop psychoanalyst can pinpoint this Ian Curtis song or that Kurt Cobain lyric as the definitive cry for help that went unanswered. As such, we should resist the temptation to see phantom significance in the title of "Twilight" or lyrics like, "Don't want to see the day when it's dying," and, "Better stop now before I start crying." This isn't a coded message-- the song's protagonist isn't even particularly bummed.

"Twilight" is simply a typically perceptive and passionate Elliott Smith song, neither more nor less. Apropos of its title, the song is introduced by cricket sounds, which are soon joined by simple acoustic downstrums and Smith's wrenching, hushed vocal. And, apart from a few restrained synth adornments, that's it. As ever, though, verbal description can't quite capture the power of the intimacy Smith provides on his recordings, or the lilt of his gossamer melodies.