Either/Or by Elliott Smith

The back cover of Either/Or, released on Kill Rock Stars, has always brought to mind the similarly stark image on Neil Young's Tonight's the Night. It's not a great leap, as both feature brilliant white subjects on jet black backgrounds. In both cases, that starkness is reflected in the music. As Pitchfork put it, "[a]chingly spare, these songs were hushed and intimate".

The album title was derived from the book of the same name by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, which as The Guardian noted, "deals with such themes as existential despair, dread, death and God. By this time, Smith's already-heavy drinking was now being compounded with use of anti-depressants."

As Scott Floman highlights, compared to his earlier releases, "this album is less about Smith's tough childhood and depencenies (drugs/booze), but despite some lighter moments most of the topics are still grim: feelings of emptiness, social anxiety issues, anger about the music industry, relationship woes... (“I hope you’re not waiting around for me, ‘cause I’m not going anywhere, obviously”). Yet so strong are the songs on this album that it leaves me feeling uplifted rather than depressed."
The back cover photo by Joanna Bolme's, a ex-girlfriend of Smith, at whose house some of the album's traks were recorded. The shot was later used by Kill Rock Stars as the front cover for a post-humous release of an alternate take of "Ballad of Big Nothing".

In reviewing the album for their top 100 albums of the1990s, Pitchfork wrote, "His elliptical lyricism and slithery song structures moved beyond the overwrought metaphors and folk regularity of his previous material to arrive at this logical, if unforeseen, conclusion."