There was a period when the name Elliott Smith was circulating only in very limited circles. Much like Ron Sexsmith, he was one of those virtually unknown songwriters who was being spoken of with almost evangelical zeal by influential fans. It was like a kind of underground movement: early independent albums began to change hands, the standard of the songwriting always spoke for itself and consequently Smith's reputation grew.
That said, by the time most of Ireland caught up with Elliott Smith, he had already been and gone, having played to a full house in The Funnel in Dublin in June this year. His next visit, however, sees him arriving in altogether different circumstances. He mightn't look the "star", but this polite Oscar nominee is now a critical sensation and firmly established as very much the real deal.
Elliott Smith was born in Dallas. At the age of 14, he moved to Portland, Oregon and from there made it to New York, where he now lives. His early musical experiences were regular enough: piano lessons, then guitar in a college production of Hair and, like many young musicians, a spell in a noisy guitar band - in this case, the Portland outfit, Heatmiser. But neither Portland nor Dallas had any particular influence on the young Smith and consequently his musical hinterland was a surprisingly limited one.
"I grew up in very white trash Dallas. I know some people really feel like they come from somewhere but I never lived anywhere all that long, and I never really got used to being anywhere. But in terms of music I was kinda bombarded with country in Dallas. It was everywhere. At the time, I didn't like country music at all, although now I really like people like Hank Williams and George Jones. But back then it was all country music and white trash metal. I liked AC/DC and stuff, but I always liked Elvis Costello a lot too."
The indie rock scene in Portland was not to be Smith's only outlet, however.
He soon began gigging as a solo artist, performing the many songs he had been secretly singing in his bedroom for years. Smith describes himself as being something of "a big chicken" when it came to this side of his songwriting, lacking confidence and wondering what his contemporaries would make of it. A more focussed fear however, was that he might be dismissed as a guitar-toting folk singer - something he certainly doesn't want to be.
"I thought that would happen and I wasn't far from wrong. You know the whole tradition of very sentimental white guys who want to make everybody know how deep and sincere they are? I didn't really want to fall into that quicksand so I always kinda recorded stuff on my own and didn't really think of it as an outward thing to play for other people - until some of my friends talked me into it. And at that time I was living in a part of the world where it was all Seattle grunge bands. To be playing acoustic music then was like crawling out on a limb and begging for it to be sawn off. But I did it anyways and it has worked out OK."
It was perhaps inevitable, given that Elliott Smith's initial reputation spread by word of mouth, that the necessary comparisons with other guitar-playing singer-songwriters were constantly made. Paul Simon and John Lennon were among those employed as shorthand to describe what Elliott Smith was like - something which he didn't particularly welcome, however flattering it may have been. "John Lennon is a comparison that I like better," he says, "although I don't deserve it. I would never compare myself to either one of them."
Elliott Smith's recent success story has been a complex one, involving record company confusion and a rather bizarre twist of fate which propelled everything into an entirely new orbit. The recording history is that three albums were made with Heatmiser in the early 1990s, Smith's first solo album Roman Candle (1994) was an independent release, as was Elliott Smith (1995) and either/or (1997). Also in Gus Van Zant decided he would like to use some of Smith's music for his new movie Good Will Hunting starring Matt Damon and Robin Williams. Five previously recorded Smith songs appeared on the soundtrack plus a new one, Miss Misery, written especially for the film. Smith also signed a new record deal with Dreamworks and released his current album X0.
Meanwhile, that new song, Miss Misery, received an Academy Award nomination, Smith performed at the Oscar ceremony and his career moved up several notches.
That unlikely appearance at the Oscar ceremony was a rather surreal event - in no other circumstance would Elliott Smith have been quite so spruced up and standing between Trisha Yearwood and Celine Dion. But the experience was well worth it - both in career terms and in the sense that this bizarre situation was also a reminder to Smith of his true preoccupations. "At the moment, it's all to do with words. I take it really seriously in a way, but the good thing about rock'n'roll is that there's a kind of light-hearted, happy accident side to it. Not like painting, where people scrutinise and take it really seriously. But I do get really inspired by other people's songs and sometimes songs from long ago.
"For me, it's like word collages, impressionistic pictures made out of words. I was once in a band that played loud rock, but now there's nothing that I really feel like yelling about, so I'd rather just sing. I'm not on any kind of kick about trying to be more pure than the music business. I just don't want to get my head turned around by it." That seems unlikely. Smith is shy and self-effacing - and the songs cover the usual songwriter territory of alienation and self-doubt. The difference is that not every songwriter can so successfully transform such frustration into something of beauty.
Elliott Smith succeeds just about every time, in a quiet and understated way with the spirit of the Beatles (and George Martin) never far from his shoulder. He likes chords, he likes arrangements and yet, when the song calls for it, he strips it back to almost nothing. For all this dependable instinct and evident skill, the writing process remains a vague one. "I always have a bunch of little pieces of songs that I just kinda think about. I don't really sit down and write, I just think of stuff all the time. Eventually, if I'm lucky, songs come out of it. Sometimes it starts with a lyric and sometimes not. It's like a dream. Dreams are very real in one way but they're not real in the way a waking day is.
"There are pieces of me in other people and I don't really always know how much of a song is really me and how much is other people. It would be ridiculous to say that a song is not me - but it's not like a diary or a journal, it's more like a dream."
Elliott Smith plays the Temple Bar Music Centre on December 6th