Pitchfork: Elliott Smith's Final Album Due in October

Elliott Smith's Final Album Due in October

Rock history is studded with deaths rooted in excess and hubris, Icarus tales that make the lives of departed stars seem like mixed blessings. Elliott Smith's apparent suicide last October was not one of this nature, though even his was fraught with its own issues. As tragic as any early death is, it was doubly so for Smith, a man held together by his music, unable to complete the album he'd spent four years writing.

The album was said to have been nearly finished at the time of Smith's passing last October. Now, having been sequenced and mixed by his longtime friends and cohorts Rob Schnapf and Joanna Bolme, Elliott's final album, From a Basement on the Hill, will be released October 19th on Anti- Records. Tracklist:

01 Coast to Coast
02 Let's Get Lost
03 Pretty (Ugly Before)
04 Don't Go Down
05 Strung Out Again
06 Fond Farewell
07 King's Crossing
08 Ostriches & Chirping
09 Twilight
10 A Passing Feeling
11 Last Hour
12 Shooting Star
13 Memory Lane
14 Little One
15 A Distorted Reality Is Now a Necessity to Be Free

Along with an alternate version of "A Distorted Reality Is Now a Necessity to Be Free", "Pretty (Ugly Before)" appeared late last year on a Suicide Squeeze seven-inch. The album version of "Distorted Reality" will appear August 10th on the Barsuk compilation Future Soundtrack for America, whose proceeds will benefit Moveon.org. The other tracks date from various periods in the album's long genesis, including two that had never been performed live ("Ostriches & Chirping" and "Twilight").

In spring of 2003, Smith told Under the Radar that much of the album, as it then stood, was recorded in first or second takes, sometimes while working without sleep for days on end. The finished version reportedly still bears the marks of this ragged creative process, as well as a combination of the sonic complexity of Smith's later solo albums and the lo-fi simplicity of his earlier ones. MTV reports that the record's opening features "mumbling spoken-word passages and ghostly noise," putting us solidly outside XO territory from the very start.

Nineteen songs from the Basement sessions will remain unreleased, with no current plans regarding their future. Smith's existing DreamWorks contract allowed for him to work concurrently with smaller labels on individual projects, so it's unclear whether, after the release of the album, the unused tracks will remain the property of DreamWorks, stay with Anti-, or just be gradually leaked via file-trading network Soulseek over the course of several years while fans clamor for a proper release. Ahh, who are we kidding? We're betting on Soulseek.