Elliott Smith is one of those people that craft songs that sound immediately familiar. Of course, i’m not just realizing that now, since i’m already achingly familiar with his last disc, XO. I first came across it while in Anastasia’s bedroom. We’d just sit on her floor every sunday for hours, talking and watching movies and listening to tori and other music. Our big difference in taste was that i liked women, and she liked men. … Musically, that is. But, slowly we infringed upon each other’s taste. Suddenly Anastasia was listening to Dilate, and i was borrowing her copy of XO and listening to it in a stunned silence as i wondered how Elliott found noises for those empty places inside my own heart. Two years later i just bought two of her favourite discs from my senior year, and she’s in college somewhere in New York. And Elliott still invokes those familiar aches.