The late American musician Elliott Smith’s ‘Pitseleh‘ was the song playing on Yellowjackets, Season 2, Episode 6 this week in the scene where Shauna gives birth.
The song continues playing as Taissa and Van are in the car talking.
Elliott Smith’s ‘Pitseleh‘ is one of the tracks from the indie folk rock singer’s fourth studio album XO, which he released in August, 1998 on the DreamWorks record label.
The album was the first one Smith released on a major label as a solo artist. XO charted in the United States, Australia and Sweden and was named by several music critics as one of the best albums of the 1990s.
With its strange title, ‘Pitseleh‘ is written from the perspective of a man who is in love, but knows he is the worst thing possible for the woman who also loves him:
I’m not what’s missing from your life now
I could never be the puzzle pieces
They say that God makes problems
Just to see what you can stand
Before you do as the Devil pleases
Give up the thing you love
A song that could illustrate the relationship between Smith and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, who got into an argument with the musician the day he died.
According to Chiba, while she had locked herself in the bathroom, Elliott Smith stabbed himself in the chest. He died a few hours later at just 34-years-old.
To this day, however, the circumstances of Smith’s death, which was ruled as a suicide, are not believed by many. Especially as the official autopsy report did not rule out homicide, and many of the details of his supposed suicide do not really make sense.
Put Smith’s death down then as a mystery we are not ever likely to solve.
Listen to Elliott Smith’s ‘Pitseleh‘ as heard on Yellowjackets this week on Spotify and in the video below.
You can hear more songs from both seasons of Yellowjackets, and learn about the artists who created them, on Leo Sigh, and learn more about Smith on his official website.