Pitchfork

Elliott Smith remade Big Star's puppy love classic the only way he knew how-- as a textbook Elliott Smith anti-production. His "Thirteen" sounds more reincarnated than covered, as if it passed through the membrane of his melancholy and emerged transformed, swathed in delicate gauzes. Smith trims some hitches from the guitar line to reveal a more lugubrious essence, replaces the sturdy jauntiness of the original vocal with his usual pensive keening, and predictably yet beautifully apprehends the celebration as an elegy. There's a sweet eternity in this song, one endless summer of passion and discovery free-standing in time, but while Big Star reveled in the moment, Smith's version is a lament for everything precious that slips through the fingers too quickly and never returns.