Posthumous releases fall into two categories: those which the artist was working on at the time of their death, and those which are gathered from every nook and cranny to keep fans enthused and cash registers ringing. Elliott Smith's from a basement on the hill is of the former variety. It was close to completion at the time of his untimely death. Over the course of the set's 15 songs, Smith's powerful songwriting and production skills are shown in their full breadth. From thickly interlocked chordal guitar riffs ("Coast to Coast") to shimmering melancholia ("A Fond Farewell"), the songs are each brought to their own particular focus by whatever means were most appropriate. There are lush background vocals, keyboard washes, pounding rhythms, and heart rending balladry. This disc is a sad goodbye to richly emotive artist. --David Greenberger
Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Almost exactly a year after his untimely death -- missing the anniversary by just two days -- Elliott Smith's final recordings were released as the From a Basement on the Hill album. Smith had been working on the album for a long time. His last album, Figure 8, had appeared in 2000, and when it came time to record its follow-up, he parted ways with both his major label, Dreamworks, and his longtime producer/engineer, Rob Schnapf, working through a number of different producers, including L.A. superproducer Jon Brion, before recording a number of sessions with David McConnell, which were supplemented with Smith's home recordings. At the time of his death, Smith was still tinkering with the album. There was no final track sequence and only a handful of final mixes; it was closer to completion than Jeff Buckley's For My Sweetheart the Drunk, which he intended to re-record, but it was still up to his family to finalize the record. For various reasons, the family chose to work with Schnapf and Joanna Bolme -- a former girlfriend of Smith and current member of Stephen Malkmus' Jicks -- instead of McConnell, who went on record with Kimberly Chun of The San Francisco Bay Area Guardian the week before the release of From a Basement to state that this album was not exactly what Smith intended it to be. According to McConnell, as well as Elliott Smith biographer Benjamin Nugent, Smith wanted the album to be rough and ragged, and McConnell told Chun that "obviously Elliott did not get his wishes," claiming that three of the songs on the album were considered finished by both him and Smith, but appear on the record in different mixes.
It's hard to dispute that Smith did not get to finalize the mixes, the track selection, or the sequencing -- he died, after all, with the album uncompleted -- but that's the nature of posthumous recordings: they're never quite what might have appeared had the artist lived. Critics, fans, and historians can have endless debates about whether this particular incarnation of the songs on From a Basement on the Hill would have been what would have been heard if Smith had finished the record, but that doesn't take away from the simple fact that the music here is strong enough to warrant a release, and that it offers a sense of resolution to his discography. While it's likely that From a Basement is cleaner than what Smith and McConnell intended, it is much sparer than Figure 8, and it feels at once more adventurous, confident, and warmer than its predecessor. Perhaps it's not "the next White Album," which is what McConnell claims it could have been, but it has a similarly freewheeling spirit, bouncing from sweet pop to fingerpicked acoustic guitars to fuzzy neo-psychedelic washes of sound. It's not far removed from Smith's previous work, but it feels like a step forward from the fussy Figure 8 and more intimate than XO. The most surprising twist is that despite the occasional lyrics that seem to telegraph his death (particularly on "A Fond Farewell"), it's not a crushingly heavy album. Like the best of his music, From a Basement on the Hill is comforting in its sadness; it's empathetic, not alienating. Given Smith's tragic fate, it also sadly seems like a summation of his work. All of his trademarks are here -- his soft, sad voice, a fixation on '60s pop, a warm sense of melancholy -- delivered in a strong set of songs that stands among his best. It may or may not be exactly what Elliott Smith intended these recording sessions to be, but as it stands, From a Basement on the Hill is a fond farewell to a singer/songwriter who many indie rockers of the '90s considered a friend.
Elliott Smith
From a Basement on the Hill
[Anti; 2004]
Rating: 7.2
Pontificating at length about the colossal sadness of Elliott Smith's discography might seem reductive or stupidly obvious, but "sad" still stands as the single most accurate label ever slapped onto any of the late singer/songwriter's records. Smith's melancholy is big, pervasive and suffocating: see strummed chords and meekly mewed verses coated in thick, gloppy layers of heartbreak, lyrics hanging heavy with cold defeat, vocals seeped in doom. Even the simplicity of Smith's songs can be oddly disheartening-- the pretty bits always conceal grim, prickly underbellies, with Smith's melodic lightness tempered by the very worst kind of self-alienation.
Pop music has enjoyed a long and tenuous relationship with sadness-as-aesthetic-anchor, and Elliott Smith's role in that lineage was obvious from the start. It was forever preserved the moment that an obviously misplaced Smith stumbled onto the Academy Awards stage sporting an awkward, ill-fitting white suit. Now, nearly a year after his presumed suicide, Elliott Smith has come to occupy a painfully specific spot in our collective pop memory, curled up alongside spiritual brethren Kurt Cobain and Nick Drake-- all somber songwriters who realized their artistic ends in hideously relevant ways, fulfilling every last one of the dismal prophecies they wrote themselves into. And, as with Cobain and Drake, the most devastating part of Elliott Smith's death wasn't the knife slammed deep into his chest, but the bland inevitability of that motion-- how nobody was surprised, how things felt so "validated," how it was disgustingly appropriate, how we were all just waiting for it.
Unsurprisingly, From a Basement on the Hill-- Smith's posthumous sixth solo album-- doesn't break form: Released uncomfortably close to the one-year anniversary of his death, the album is riddled with helpless proclamations and self-incriminating taunts, clanging guitars and foggy, jumbled arrangements. Like nearly all of Smith's records, From a Basement covers his despair in sweet, perky, folk-pop kisses; and yet the album is still the saddest thing you'll hear all year. Smith's gloom may be romanticized into gold, but what's ultimately most harrowing about his unhappiness is its nastiness-- and that same gritty, uncompromising accuracy is also what makes his records so impossibly urgent, so uncomfortable and desperate. Reality is splattered all over From a Basement on the Hill-- dissonant guitars that sometimes coalesce and sometimes clash, vocals that flit from beautiful to strained, lyrics that range from clever to pedantic, production choices that hop maniacally from right to wrong.
For whatever reason, Smith's happier moments have always felt a little meaner than his darkest. They're somehow more smirking and cruel, as if they'd been put in place as pure provocation. Even the lightest tracks here (see the excellent "King's Crossing", or the barely-there "Memory Lane") are bogged down by their own sense of inevitability, or maybe by our own-- it's almost impossible not to judge From a Basement on the Hill without first acknowledging the complicated context of its release, cringing at its song titles, and promptly biting back presumptive words like "foreshadowing."
Supposedly, Smith had finished most of the work on From a Basement before his death last October, and the completed tracks were posthumously compiled by his immediate family and mixed by one-time girlfriend/present-day Jicks member Joanna Bolme and longtime producer Rob Schnapf ("final production" is credited only to "Elliott's family and friends"). And perhaps surprisingly, From a Basement on the Hill is perfectly coherent and cohesive, without any sense of being slapped together from half-finished parts. The record even boasts a classic Smith opener, the booming and majestic "Coast to Coast", which swells in and out in a haze of guitar ping and found sound murmurs. Collaborating again with former Heatmiser bandmate (and current Quasi member) Sam Coomes, "Pretty (Ugly Before)" weds tinkling piano with goofy guitar bits and lyrics that are somehow equally disheartened and optimistic ("Sunshine/ Been keeping me up for days/ There's no nighttime/ It's only a passing phase").
Still, the most disheartening thing about From a Basement on the Hill is its plainness-- it's neither a perfect record (and not one of Smith's best) nor the kind of colossal disaster that could be angrily pinned on money-hungry handlers and desperate fans. It's likely that Elliott Smith will be resurrected and rediscovered countless times over, and that his suicide will become as big a part of his legacy as his discography, feeding the mythology, informing the songs. But while From a Basement on the Hill will certainly have a place in that tradition, its impact will prove a stark contrast to his most affecting work.
-Amanda Petrusich, October 18, 2004
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