Nothing Else Matters

by Linda Smith

Overview

In 1995, home-recording visionary Linda Smith was making the leap from bedroom four-track daydreaming to the digital seriousness of the compact disc and a jump to eight-track recording. Nothing Else Matters followed close to ten years of output from Smith that was mostly released on limited-run cassette editions and traded between die-hard underground types. That's not to say that her first album that was pressed to CD was any kind of an abandonment of her idiosyncratic songwriting or arrangement style. If anything, the smeared edges of her songs and unique perspectives on contorted pop are in clearer definition on Nothing Else Matters, but her playfulness and aptitude for interesting sounds remain intact. On brooding tracks like "In No Uncertain Terms" and "In the Hospital," acoustic guitars are pushed along by shambling percussion and crude keyboard sounds, and Smith is occasionally joined by Elizabeth Downing singing wordless vocals for an effect that's haunting and homespun. "The Answer to Your Question" sounds like the Magnetic Fields and Young Marble Giants covering the Modern Lovers from memory. Fittingly, the 2024 reissue of Nothing Else Matters includes a cover of Young Marble Giants' "Salad Days" that feels very much at home among the other Farfisa organ tones and wobbly drum beats of Smith's compositions here. Nancy Andrews, who would continue collaborating with Smith for years to come, adds some violin to the joyously anxious instrumental "For Here or to Go," and the spare, melancholic guitar lament "It Seems to Me" drifts by like a soft, indecisive afternoon. Though this was one of Smith's first forays out of the warm web of tape hiss and lo-fi production, Nothing Else Matters is as strange and generous as any of her most deteriorating recordings. What shines here, as on all of her albums, is how unique and curious of a songwriting presence Smith always was, in whatever fidelity, format, or era. ~ Fred Thomas

Product Details

Release Date:	03/01/2024
Label:	Captured Tracks Rec.
UPC:	0817949037062
Rank:	45945

Tracks

1. The Answer to Your Question
2. In No Uncertain Terms
3. I'll Never See You Again
4. For Here or to Go
5. In the Hospital
6. Bright Side
7. All of the Blue
8. Only a Moment
9. I See Your Face
10. It Seems to Me
11. Little to Be Won
12. Nothing Else Matters
13. Salad Days

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Linda Smith   Primary Artist,Violin
Peggy Bitzer   Percussion,Guitar
Liz Downing   Vocals
Nancy Andrews   Violin

Technical Credits

Stuart Moxham   Composer
Alison Statton   Composer
Linda Smith   Composer
George Hagegeorge   Production Advisor,Mixing