Condor Ave.

Oh god I could write volumes about this story. It's such a well thought out fiction about lack of communication. She falls asleep at the wheel after a fight. He's left at home to think. The screen door he slams representing a useless display of emotion. While she slips off into oblivion, and the useless drunk who witnessed the whole deal but was unable to communicate anything about it because of his innebriated state. "Bottle in between his teeth...Buried in the sand at the beach." The cops scrambling for clues but the real reason for the crash is much deeper than just some ordered evidence. The cops again representing order. The moth that is doomed to repeat this self-abusing action of bumping into a light bulb...do you think the light bulb represents him or her? Light bulb, something bright that the moth is constantly attracted to. He loves talking about the moon. It's cycles, how it will follow you around, or in this case, she follows the moon aimlessly and thus crashes. Kinda like the light bulb. He's blowing smoke signs to her, another useless attempt at communication. And then he finally delivers the most biting line of the whole song. "What a shitty thing to say, did you really mean it?" There's so much subdued angst in that line and spiteful indifference in that line. And then finally the resolution where he tells you what the song is about and how he is finally going to deal with their situation. "You never said a word to me about what passed between us." And "Na na na na" Geez man, and he allegedly wrote it in high school!!! unbelievable.

These are some of my favorite lyrics I've ever heard.

The story, I guess, is that that he had a huge fight with his girlfriend about something stupid and petty, and she drove away upset, crashed her car and died.

This is real poetry. It's beautiful.

they ever get uptight when a moth gets crushed unless a light bulb really loved him very much

i love that, it's clever

why this song is KILLING me?....

I can’t imagine how anyone could find this song to be ‘without symbolism’. I think the imagery and word-play is stunning. A few of my favourite examples:

• ‘threw the screen…’ sounds identical to ‘through the screen…’ (i.e. going through a windscreen in a car crash)

• He’s screaming like people at fairgrounds. The screams that you hear at a fairground are the screams of people who are afraid they are going to crash. And, of course, the car crash happens at the entrance to a fairground.

• The drunk man looks 'like he’s buried', which, of course, he’s about to be because he was killed in the crash.

• The smoke signals he is sending are ‘little whispers’. He’s worried about 'making a whisper out of her'. So 'making a whipser' turns out to be about turning her into smoke.

• The last verse is full of images of lights going on and off: the moon, the headlights, the cigarette, the ‘burning out’ of the crash, the light bulb, etc. It makes me think of a few different things: the headlights of the car, the bad street lighting (?), the attraction between the two of them which proved fatal, as well as the obvious death/life imagery of light, and of the moth getting crushed because it is drawn to the light.

Perhaps some of these are unintended, but I doubt that they all are. And I don’t really care much whether they were or not.

I always got the image that as well as killing herself when she crashed the car, she killed an alcoholic homeless guy, and when they found the wreckage "they took away the bottle and the hat that he was under- that's the one thing that he could never do." But nobody was particularly bothered about his death, "they never get upset when a moth gets crushed..." I don't know if you have the car hire company Condor Self Drive in America but whenever I see one of their vans I think of this. Maybe my favourite song ever.

What an achingly beautiful song.

I think it's about the end of a relationship, and the fatal car crash is a symbolic representation of this woman's death to him. Breaking up is like death in a lot of ways: an end, the severing of connection. In live versions Smith changed the line about the cops removing the drunk man's bottle and tipped hat ("That's the one thing that he could never do") to "That's the one thing that I could never do." Elliott Smith was an addict, so this character drinking by the fairground gate that is killed by the woman falling asleep at the wheel could be meant to represent Smith. The woman dies in this accident, as does the man with the bottle between his teeth. I interpret that to mean that they both (Smith and Ex-Girlfriend) might as well be dead, she could be driving away in her Oldsmobile to the moon, because they're no longer together. Even if in reality they're both alive, they're in separate worlds now. But, that's just my opinion. ...God, if this is a true story meant to be interpreted literally, then it's even sadder.

This song has completely gripped me; I can't stop listening to it. The lyrics, his voice, the mood created, the story told...he was an amazing, inspiring artist. And his art lives on. I love the moth and lightbulb line-- so clever, and so true. I also love the repeated "It'll make a whisper out of you." Beautiful. Definitely strikes a chord. He put words to that feeling anyone who has lost love has felt, how there is a presence in the negative space, how the missing pieces linger like a whisper. And, of course, the perfect, honest imperfection of the closing paragraph, "What a shitty thing to say, did you really mean it? Never said a word to me about what passed between us. Now I'm leaving you alone, you can do whatever the hell you want to, naaananananana." Shit, I could talk about this song forever, it's like a good piece of literature. Incredibly talented artist. There's a little piece of the world missing with Elliott Smith gone.

wow, i always missed the story in this one when listening to it, but reading the lyrics makes me love it even more. I think this might be a story he heard or something that happened to someone else he knew, i dont recall hearing anything about something like that happening to him. That would make it one of the less autobiographical tracks on this album.. but wow.. i thought lask kiss was a good song about thing, but this one FAR surpasses it.

about this*

Yeah, I think it is about him, or the narrorator, getting into a fight or breaking up with his girlfriend, then she gets killed by a drunk driver (wish that car had never been discovered they took away the bottle and the hat he was under), and he tries to forget her and move on, but can't.