HERE I LAY DREAMING LOOKING AT THE BRILLIANT SUN

I've been listening to Elliott Smith's album XO since it first came out in 1998. I bought it as a CD on Amazon in the days when folks bought CD's.

I've always adored XO. I used to play it most on the stereo in the kitchen diner we have, as I wrapped items for Ebay buyers during the winters of the new Millennium, along with other albums from indie artists and from my new musical love at the time, Grunge.

XO was and is a sparkling thing, like a glass herald walking in and starting to sing jewels. I was and still am entranced by the lush folds and beautiful layering that Elliott created as the century closed. Every song is special, sweet, unusual and mesmerising, like when you first heard Lionheart by Kate Bush 20 years earlier or the Beatle's White Album 10 years before that. Fresh, haunting, meaningful.

Listening again to it now in a format Elliott could never have experienced, on my laptop via You Tube with earphones, I'm taken back to those winter nights when I'd play XO, Natalie Marchant's Ophelia, Embrace's The Good Will Out and Pearl Jam's Ten one after the other, as I folded brown paper and bit sellotape into pieces and stuck them on the chair spindle. I was in my early Forties and really enjoyed my music again like I had in the early Seventies. XO holds a special place in that memory.

Five years after I bought XO Elliott Smith was dead. He died of stab wounds in his LA home in 2003 aged just 34. Somewhere I hope he lies dreaming looking at the brilliant sun he sung about.

You can listen to XO on You Tube if you want to too.