Heatmiser - Mic City Sons

The third and last album from Heatmiser came out in 1996.  It's a strange mixture of Neil Gust's songs and Elliott Smith's, though the latter had already released two solo albums.  Smith's grungy riffing Get Lucky opens the album with considerable swagger, not something you'd associate with Elliott Smith.  Plainclothes Man is more familiar territory for Smith, featuring his acoustic guitar backed up by the rest of the band, and could easily fit on of his later solo albums.  The lyrics of The Fix Is In will be poured over for 'clues' surrounding Smith's demise but the music here is again, first-class. 

Gust's songs are less memorable, his vocals are a little more muted and are inclined to blend in with the music on the likes of Low-Flying Jets and Cruel Reminders.  An odd-sounding guitar figure introduces Rest My Head Against the Wall, and Gust's guitar work together with his somewhat gruff vocal make this the standout of the Gust material.  Less successful is the frantic-sounding Eagle Eye which is a little too fast and brief.  Later, Blue Highway is a decent rock song in search of a  strong vocal. 

A pair of Elliott Smith songs round of the album really strongly.  The rocky See You Later is pretty anthemic, with a soaring vocal over growling guitars.  Finally, Half Right is arguably the strongest song on the album.  Slow, deliberate guitars pick out an absolutely gorgeous melody which feels both fragile and triumphant all at the same time.  Definitely worth checking out for fans of Elliott Smith.

Top 10 posts of 2015

Here's a rundown on the most popular posts of 2015:

10 Smashing Pumpkins - Machina/The Machines of God

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/04/album-review-smashing-pumpkins.html

9 Elliott Smith - New Moon

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/11/album-review-elliott-smith-new-moon.html

8 Midlake - The Courage of Others

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/08/midlake-courage-of-others.html

7 Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/06/album-review-midlake-trials-of-van.html

5 Songs: Ohia

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/11/album-review-songs-ohia.html

5 Midlake - Antiphon

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/05/midlake-antiphon.html

4 Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie - Travels In Constant

http://nomoreworkhorse.com/2015/05/15/adam-bryanbaum-wiltzie-travels-in-constant-vol-24-ep-review/

3 Mark Eitzel - Caught In A Trap And I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much Baby

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/07/album-review-mark-eitzel-caught-in-trap.html

2 The Posies - Frosting On The Beater

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/08/album-review-posies-frosting-on-beater.html

1 Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2015/06/album-review-sufjan-stevens-carrie-and.html

Elliott Smith - From A Basement On A Hill

Elliott Smith's final album was released posthumously in 2004.  He was working on this right before his death and it couldn't be more different from his early work in the mid to late nineties.  It's a sprawling, 15 track affair, opening with Coast to Coast, which lays down a marker that things here are... different.  It opens with slightly off electric guitars, almost playing on top of each other.  On this track Smith sounds woozy, yet the music is largely energised, belying the sadness of the lyrics - "anything that I could do would never be good enough for you".  As the track's final seconds ebb away, we here dislocated babble, which adds to the overall weirdness of the track.

For those who prefer Smith at his simplest, fear not.  Let's Get Lost is a classic simple guitar ditty with dreams of escaping ("find some beautiful place to get lost"), yet self-loathing permeates this track ("I had true love, I made it die, I pushed her away").  Later, The Last Hour and Memory Lane have a similar stripped-down feel.  But the order of the day here is weariness, and tracks like Pretty (Ugly Before), Don't Go Down and Strung Out Again have this in spades, in a sort of late 60s Beatles kind of way.

A Fond Farewell is a kind of 'more-filled out' version of the unadorned Elliott Smith sound, and is quite pleasing to the ears.  On the other hand, the Christmas-themed King's Crossing is largely unsettling, with its bursts of static-tiinged instrumentation and Smith's ghoulish proclamation ("give me one good reason not to do it").  Later, Shooting Star is as close as Smith gets here to sprawling, messy rock.  That's just a handful of the fifteen tracks contained here.  It's not the tacky cash-in one might fear, but a worthy line drawn under Elliott Smith's musical career.

Elliott Smith - Either/Or

Although Elliott Smith's third album, released in 1997, is a little more fleshed out than his first two, yet it doesn't lose anything quality-wise.  That's due largely to the fact that the songs are generally very strong, and don't outstay their welcome, the whole album lasting just under 37 minutes.  Certainly the opening track Speed Trials, while guitars are accompanied by bass and drum, there's nothing slick about this downbeat little beauty with a lovely, keening vocal from Smith.  Alameda is close as he ever got to strutting, with a loping beat and an almost sprightly guitar solo in the middle.

The next two tracks might well represent the 'heart' of the album.  Two 'soft' tracks, Ballad of Big Nothing has a Beatles gone fatalistic feel about it while the whispered Between the Bars a slow, muted tune that wraps itself around you late at night.  The guitar playing on these songs is recorded fantastically, it's one for the headphones.  After this Pictures of Me is more propulsive and darker, Smith spitting out lyrics about being "so sick and tired of all these pictures of me", and later "who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees".  There's a sort of decaying weariness at the heart of many of these songs.  No Name No. 5 sees him crooning about how "everybody's gone at last".  Later, Cupid's Trick has a similar feel, Smith sounds blasted and shattered singing "it's my life, should've lit me up"

Rose Parade is totally different, sounding more upbeat, you could imagine this one on daytime radio.  Angeles and the appropriately named 2.45 AM are pure late night listening.  Consisting mostly of Elliott Smith's guitar picking, they're the closest thing here to anything on his first two albums.  Overall this album works really well, it won't upset anyone who likes the early stuff but it acts as a bridge between that and his more fleshed out, later material.  Essential.

Elliott Smith - Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith's second album, released in 1995, is very much in the mould of his first (Roman Candle), consisting mainly of stripped down, acoustic based songs.  It opens with the scratchy, whispering Needle In The Hay, a tense, uncompromising acoustic song.  The empathetic, downcast guitars of the almost vengeful Christian Brothers follows.  Tracks like these are, if anything, stronger than anything on Roman Candle.  This album, however is less consistent, not maintaining such high quality right through.  That's not to say there aren't strong songs - the rolling, enchanting guitars of Single File complement the slow drift of Satellite.

The songs are kind of equal parts wide-eyed innocence and deeply troubled, and if that sounds like a contradiction it probably is.  Lyrics about how "the moon is a sickle cell, it'll kill you in time" (Coming Up Roses) are a prime example of this.  St Ides Heaven feels a little like Nirvana at their most basic and stripped down, while Good To Go has a more seventies singer/songwriter feel.  Towards the end, The White Lady Loves You More is a bit of a departure, feeling almost symphonic, despite the troubling subject matter.  But a really strong album for the most part. 

Album Review: Elliott Smith - New Moon

I have to admit I approached this one with caution.  Posthumous releases reek of exploitation, as memorably detailed in The Smiths' Paint A Vulgar Picture.  However for anyone enthralled by the earlier, more stripped down Elliott Smith releases this is a wonder.  Twenty four unreleased tracks is a treasure trove in any fan's language.  It opens with the slow deliberate guitar picking of Angel In The Snow, where Smith sings in a ghostly whisper.  Talking To Mary and Looking Over My Shoulder are in a similar, unhurried vein.  None of this would be particularly interesting if the melodies weren't so strong.  Any so-called 'pop' band would kill for these tunes, they are consistently original and unpredictable.  High Times builds gradually to an intense climax of Smith croaking "high times" over urgently strummed guitar.

It's not all quiet, acoustic tracks.  New Monkey is one of the more fleshed-out tracks here, featuring electric guitar, bass, drums and a soaring, singalong chorus,   One track which has appeared elsewhere is an early embryonic version of Miss Misery.  And the one cover here, Big Star's Thirteen is rendered in a faithful, almost child-like version.

The second CD is arguably not as strong but still has its fair share of gems.  The impassioned strum of Georgia, Georgia would have fitted on Smith's earliest albums, while the frantic strum of Big Decision and the introspective sleigh-bells (!) of Seen How Things Are Hard are a less than comfortable listen.  Elsewhere there are the fragile, fingerpicked Placeholder and New Disaster, along with fuller, band tracks like Fear City and Either/Or.  Towards the end, Almost Over showcases his guitar dexterity, here he manages Nick Drake-like skills on one of the finer tracks here, all dispatched in two minutes.  

It's a great service to Elliott Smith fans that these tracks were unearthed, and this collection is as worthwhile as anything else in his catalogue.

Album Review: Elliott Smith – Roman Candle

Elliott Smith released his debut in 1994, a short album running to just half an hour in duration. It’s largely his breathy vocals and acoustic guitar, with some electric guitar overdubs. The odd backing vocal here and there. No percussion. So it should be awful. Further more only 5 of the 9 songs have titles, the others being No Name #1, #2, #3 and #4.

It sounds very intimate, with every breath of his vocals and every movement of his fingers clearly audible, perhaps due to the 4-track production. The title track sets the tone for the album, with it’s insistent guitars and slightly menacing refrain (“I want to hurt him, I want to give him pain”). Condor Avenue is in a similar vein, and sounds like the raw materials for his later, more well-known material.

No Name #1 and No Name #2 have a more relaxed feel, #2 throwing in some harmonica. What separates this from the usual run-of-the-mill singer-songwriter fare is some unexpected chord changes which crop up all over the album, notably in No Name #3.

It’s a little samey when listened to right through, though final track Kiwi Maddog 20/20, an instrumental, is a welcome departure, with surf-style guitar. The rest of it can be bracketed with Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate etc.

I understand this album has been recently remastered and re-released, which I presume means cleaned up to make it ‘sound better’. Shame. Part of the charm is the little glitches here and there on the album. And I am fond of hearing fingers sliding over guitar strings.

Ideal circumstances to listen: Cliché it may be, but a darkened room in January at about 2am with the ice running down the window… and down your veins.

Review of the Decade - Part 5: RIP

Layne Staley: 22nd August 1967 – 5th April 2002
There was a depressing inevitability about Layne’s death. As the singer with ‘grunge’ band Alice in Chains, he had struggled with heroin addiction for many years, indeed wrote about it openly on their 1992 album Dirt. He had retreated from the spotlight in his latter years, his last high profile appearance was on MTV Unplugged in 1996 where he appeared to be struggling. He was found two weeks after his death, when police broke into his apartment. Cause of death was adjudged to be an overdose. He contributed vocals and lyrics to all of Alice in Chains albums in the 1990s. Strangely the band reformed in 2008 with a replacement singer, William DuVall. It’s worth checking out the album Dirt, if you like their heavier side, or Jar of Flies for moodier acoustic music.

Nina Simone: 21st February 1933 – 12th January 2003
Nina Simone died of breast cancer in 2003. A giant of the jazz/blues scene, she had not recorded for 10 years or so, yet has a strong body of work which belongs in anyone’s music collection. Hard to distil her career down into highlights, but Feeling Good will probably become her signature tune. A comprehensive ‘best of’ is definitely worth seeking out.

Johnny Cash: 26th February 1932 – 12th September 2003
Cash died in 2003 four months after his wife. While best known for country music, his deep voice and black apparel caused him to be adopted by younger followers in the mid-90s, when he recorded a series of stripped-down, largely acoustic albums known as the American Recordings, which interspersed original songs with unusual covers of artists like Beck, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden.

Elliott Smith: 6th August 1969 – 21st October 2003
Primarily known for guitar-based acoustic music, Elliott Smith recorded a series of albums in the 1990s and early 2000s. Earlier albums were largely acoustic, though later albums saw him achieve a degree of success and an Oscar nomination with a more-fleshed out sound. He did however struggle with depression and drug addiction, and took his life in 2003.

Grant McLennan: 12th February 1958 – 6th May 2006
Played in the Go-Betweens, main songwriter and guitarist along with Robert Forster. His songs tended to be more upbeat than Forster’s, and generally had a more commercial sound (though little commercial success). The band released several albums in the 1980s but split in 1990. He released solo albums in the 90s before regrouping with Forster in 1999 for 3 further Go-Betweens albums. The band’s reunion was brought to an abrupt end due to McLennan’s death of a heart attack.

Ron Asheton: 17th July 1948 – 6th January 2009

See previous entry: http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.com/2009/02/ron-asheton-rip.html

John Martyn: 11th September 1948 – 29th January 2009
John Martyn had a long musical career from the late 60s till the 2000s, with his albums straddling folk, jazz and blues and a slurred vocal style. His 1973 album Solid Air contained his best-known songs, the title track (a tribute to Nick Drake) and May You Never. Much of his work was experimental as he explored ambient sounds, however alcohol and drugs became the ruin of him. He was forced to have his right leg amputated in 2004 and died in 2009 of double pneumonia.