Linda Smith — Nothing Else Matters/I So Liked Spring (Captured Tracks)
In 2021 Captured Tracks released Till Another Time: 1988-96, a collection of recordings by Baltimore musician Linda Smith. Culled from Smith’s trove of cassette recordings, this was the first time Smith’s music had been pressed to vinyl.
Bedroom recording has long held an allure, but that release was timely. Smith, trailblazer of home taping, was already known and loved in certain pockets, especially among DIY musicians. But Till Another Time connected with pandemic-era listeners, many of whom were exploring their own isolated musical setups.
Smith’s home recording was born of its own sort of necessity. She played in a few bands over the years, including Woods, which performed at Maxwell’s and CBGB in the 1980s. But she never loved performing live. “I knew I wasn’t a rock star,” she told the Baltimore Banner last year. “But I still wanted to make music.” While in Woods she bought her first 4 track recorder, hoping to get her ideas out in a way that her bandmates could understand. For the first time, she said in a 1991 Popwatch interview, “my songs really seemed to belong to me.”
This past March Captured Tracks reissued two of Smith’s records, Nothing Else Matters and I So Liked Spring, originally released in 1995 and 1996, respectively. By the mid- '90st Smith had graduated from a 4-track recorder to a Fostex 8-track, allowing her to explore more sophisticated compositions.
As a kid Smith was a fan of the Beatles and Motown and spent a lot of time listening to AM radio, which imbued her with a strong sense of pop structures. Later she got into the Raincoats and Young Marble Giants, artists she admired and resembled both musically and philosophically: Clearly none of them were in it for fame and fortune.
Nothing Else Matters includes a cover of Young Marble Giants’ “Salad Days” which retains the stately simplicity of the original but doubles the runtime, extending it with layers of hysterical laughter and a soft roar of distant conversation. This marriage of minimalist elegance and woozy playfulness is typical of the record. It’s full of boney drum beats and “96 Tears”-esque Wurlitzer-y riffs, cool garage-rock hooks, clever melodies, dry humor and smart, idiosyncratic lyrics.
For I So Liked Spring Smith set music to the poems of late 19th/early 20th century poet Charlotte Mew. It's slightly softer around the edges than Nothing Else Matters but the tunes still twist in unexpected directions as Smith, a worthy and convincing ambassador, shapes her compositions around Mew’s words. In their relative simplicity these songs bloom with each listen.
Generally, Smith told the Women in Sound zine in 2015, she’d start with a sample beat, then she’d layer guitar, keyboard, and more guitar to fill things out, then vocals and handheld percussion. “I never had a very expensive microphone,” she said, “and sometimes preferred cheaper ones to get an interesting sound.”
As the glut of pandemic-era Bandcamp releases proved, a home recording is only as good as the artist behind it. Smith — a skilled writer and intuitive arranger — didn’t give herself many places to hide within her recordings, and she didn’t have to. As with her simple instrumentation Smith knows how to work the unique dynamics of her slightly husky, untrained voice. Sometimes wistful, sometimes sardonic, sometimes exuberant, it all sparkles.
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