Legacy Management

Filling in gaps on Elliott Smith before the algorithms erase them....

When Elliott Smith died in 2003, the first work of art mentioned in virtually all of the obituaries was the soundtrack to Good Will Hunting. The film’s melancholy tone was shaped (some would say entirely dependent upon) songs from several Smith albums and a new one he wrote for the closing credits. “Miss Misery” became his breakthrough hit and was nominated for an Oscar.

Typical media truncation, a rich legacy collapsed into a single reference. From an editorial perspective, it makes sense: This was the way most of the public encountered the prodigiously talented Smith. No problem.

Except then time goes by. The tag line sticks, possibly becomes the story. The remainder of the artist’s work doesn’t really fade away – that’s one of the saving graces of the Internet – it just waits for the increasingly inevitable rediscovery moment. (See: Talking Heads Stop Making Sense, The Replacements Tim, The Breeders Last Splash, all upgraded within the last week.)

Discovery thankfully happens, almost in spite of the streaming services and with or without fancy reissues. But we’re in a moment when AI bots and algorithms are doing the search-engine “optimization,” and all they know is numbers; they real-time track the great popularity contest of web traffic. Not art.

Which brings questions: For an artist like Smith, who’s been gone for a while, is discovery made easier by the breadcrumb of the big hit acting as a beacon? Or, given its overweighted popularity, does the hit sorta bigfoot everything else in the catalog, throwing other works into the shadows? Today it’s possible to find most everything Smith released – including six (!) eye-opening records he made in high school. Will that be the case later on, when the numbers maybe don’t justify the server space? Will a human being decide this?

Here comes more for the shadows: Before he became Elliott Smith of Good Will Hunting fame, the singer, guitarist and songwriter was in a Portland Oregon-based band called Heatmiser. The group made three erratic, occasionally great albums in the 1990s, and several members have made subsequent contributions to indie rock: Guitarist and songwriter Neil Gust formed the band No. 2; bassist Sam Coomes was half of Quasi and played on and produced work by Built to Spill and Sleater-Kinner; drummer Tony Lash produced albums by The Dandy Warhols and Death Cab for Cutie.

Next week brings The Music of Heatmiser, a vault sweep from Third Man Records that includes a 6-song self-issued cassette from 1992, live and radio-station performances, singles and demos. Aimed at fans, this set doesn’t attempt to reframe the band’s legacy; rather, it offers a wider lens on the ways this band with two distinct songwriters (Smith and Gust) responded to the musical disruptions of grunge. For instant transport to the Pacific Northwest during the long chart reign of Nirvana’s Nevermind, check the jittery, wickedly tight “Lowlife” demo. (Retaining these rhythm parts, Heatmiser re-recorded vocals for the band’s 1993 debut Dead Air.)

Heatmiser nailed the fuck-all caterwauling ethos of grunge. It wasn’t nearly the most revolutionary band in the region, but it did take the Mudhoney/Melvins components and do semi-original things with them. Both composers wrote songs with crisp guitar architecture and melodic, if voicebox-shredding vocals; both projected a wounded and detached wariness into lyrics about relationships in doubt or relationships in turmoil.

The compilation includes this blistering 1:24 second cathartic hiccup, sung by Smith, called “Wake.” It was first released on an EP called Yellow No. 5:

And unlike some other bands working this terrain, Heatmiser evolved. Its third album Mic City Sons (1996) is less abrasive and more reflective, while retaining the tart observational lyrics. The Smith songs replace two-chord riffs with the type of interesting Beatles-inspired chord sequences that distinguish his solo works (check the stonecold gem “See You Later”); other tracks (“Low-Flying Jets”) build drama almost subversively, using acoustic guitars to navigate contrasts in density and dynamics. The band broke up before the album was released, allowing Smith, who’d complained about the coarseness of the band, to develop his identity as a solo artist.

But in a sense, his music was largely innate, instinctual, from the beginning. Those pre-Heatmiser high school recordings, most available via YouTube, suggest that Smith (then identified by his given name Steven Paul Smith) started out with tremendous natural talent and an ear for the plaintive and the wistful. Recording homemade works under various names – Stranger Than Fiction, A Murder of Crows, Harum Scarum – Smith and a revolving cast of friends rolled tape to capture disciplined original songs as well as goofy jams, some of them featuring eyebrow-raising Smith guitar solos. These they sold to friends and a few Portland shops in limited quantities; after Smith’s death, a Texas fan named Cameron McCrary began a multi-year process to collect them, even though some were not listed on Discogs or other databases.

McCrary eventually made contact with Lash, the Heatmiser drummer, and sorted out Smith’s early prehistory. Then he posted them, sparking interest within the Elliott Smith fan community. (These are findable on YouTube but not sharable — among the highlights I found were Harum Scarum’s “Fifteen Minutes,” A Murder of Crows’ “Take A Fall” from 1989 and Stranger Than Fiction’s “The Real Estate.”) Of course there are questions of ownership and control in terms of publishing and copyright, and beyond that lurk the not-small reputational considerations that come under the heading “Legacy Management.” We don’t know if Smith would have sanctioned their release. We can’t know. So let’s just call them educational and historical, which they are: These tracks provide key contextual details about the very early work of a major songwriter. Enjoy them while they last….

Thanks for reading! To join the conversation: echolocatormusic@gmail.com