It was the melody of “Pitseleh” that got me first. Striking in its simplicity, the way the lulling guitar sequence ushers the song through its verses, greeting defiant piano chords, merging with vocal harmonies… it’s simply a gorgeous arrangement. But it’s through his lyrics that Elliott Smith really reached his audience, and “Pitseleh”, a song off his 1998 lovesick gem of an album, XO, is a song so beautifully bitter that it gives new meaning to the throes of unrequited love.

Smith had a way of penning songs about human woes and wallows that simultaneously sock you in the gut while melting over you in forlorn waves of realization. One listen may reveal itself, but further listens can open up entire spectrums of meaning. Smith, of course, was a conflicted artist and individual, a man that was ultimately beaten by his own demons. Today, it’s nearly impossible to listen to almost any one of his songs beyond the context of his suicide in 2003. “Pitseleh” (the word means “little one” in Yiddish) is no doubt a bitter song, framed by the uncertainties and self-doubts that surface when love goes astray, exposing Smith’s mounting desperation with his own life.

It opens with the verse, “I’ll tell you why I don’t want to know where you are / I got a joke I’ve been dying to tell you / A silent kid is looking down the barrel / To make the noise that I kept so quiet / I kept it from you, pitseleh.” From this opening line, Smith makes it clear that he is angry, yet doesn’t want to hurt his pitseleh. The joke, of course, is not so much a joke, but rather a harsh ploy for her attention, to let her know how much he is suffering. A “kid” is looking down the barrel (of a gun presumably) because he just wants to hear a sound—a gunshot explosion, so be it. That harbored noise, once it finally surfaces, would serve to put the anguish away and end it all. It’s a mean-spirited “joke” that Smith is “dying to tell,” but still he wishes to protect her: Hence, the first line of the song. He doesn’t want to know where she is, so as to not hurt her. She’d only blame herself.

Resignation follows. “I’m not what’s missing from your life now / I could never be the puzzle pieces,” he sighs. What a sad, straight lyric. These moments of realization do not ease the torment of knowing that he was unable to be her “puzzle pieces.” “They say that God makes problems / Just to see what you can stand / Before you do as the Devil pleases / And give up the thing you love.” It is here that he reaches out for an understanding bigger than just himself, a reliance on God, that there is, in fact, order in the world, a reason things happen. Will yourself through it, he sings, stay with God, though the Devil may loom near, it is in his clutches you will “give up the thing you love.” That purity and faith of goodness will be lost, never to be regained—God can’t get you back. And then, beckoning those purposeful piano chords that follow on this lyric’s heel: “But no one deserves it.” This pain that he’s feeling, that he wants to inflict—no one fucking deserves it. Could it be seen as a curse at God, following the previous verse about those higher powers?

Resignation sighs again: “The first time I saw you / I knew it would never last.” And then, one of the most tear-inducing lines, like, ever, with a sweet harmony very quietly coming in to greet him and carry the song home: “I’m not half what I wish I was.” With Smith’s suicide a tragic reality considered within the context of this line, it shakes you to the core. It’s so valiant in its honesty. He feels undeserving, wishing he were a better person, and here, five years before he killed himself, he voices that despair. And then, a stark reality, which he’s been hinting at throughout the whole song, only now he just puts it out there, cathartically owning his bitterness: “I’m so angry, I don’t think it’ll ever pass.”

Followed by “And I was bad news for you, just because / I never meant to hurt you,” the song culminates with Smith revealing an utter sense of worthlessness and self-blame, but underscored by empathy. Despite his suffering, he didn’t want to hurt her, his pitseleh. There really isn’t much else to say. He feels like it was his fault, he knows he hurt her, and now that he’s in agony, it’s just so fucking hard to reconcile these things.

There are likely more painful, eloquent songs in his deeply expressive catalog. But the power of Elliott Smith is that when you get him, you get him, from song selections that speak to you directly: Most Elliott Smith fans have a personal favorite. “Pitseleh”, through countless listens to unravel what his exact sentiments mean to me, is an example of why music helps me make sense of this woebegone world, knowing that I can identify with someone else’s pain, someone else’s story. And really, that’s the exquisite power of what music can do: It brings people truly together through song.

Listen: “Pitseleh” [at youtube.com]

Tags:Elliott Smith

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