You have expectations. You make certain presumptions. Chances are in this case they’re driven as much by morbid curiosity as anything more reasoned, that’s only natural. This first (and last?) posthumous release from Elliott Smith will undoubtedly shift big units to death tourists in search of a suicide note they can clap along to, coded allusions to a big exit or just a piece of rock memorabilia to file alongside ‘You Know You’re Right’ and the “legacy” edition of ‘Grace’. Try as we might there will be no reflecting on this album with the objectivity it truly does deserve.
It’s a shame that it took his passing for ‘From A Basement On The Hill’ to see light of day at all. Its title was already infamous, there was talk of him making it a double-album, and peculiar murmurs of DreamWorks passing it up and allowing him free reign to release it through whichever indie he saw fit. It is comforting to see that arrangement of independence honoured here and also that his family, friends and collaborators have afforded such obvious care and dignity to the overdue completion of his sixth album.
Perhaps you expect an unfinished, fragmented collection of demos then. Maybe you presume this to be little more than a token offering to appease grieving fans and ensure that his legacy lives on. Brilliantly though you’d be so wrong – even if it does, inevitably, serve to accelerate his legacy. This is an album containing 15 songs that are as rich, imaginative and absolute as anything he put his name to pre-departure. On one hand, though barren and lo-fi, everything is just so – like one more touch would have misshapen it. And we realise this may be informed largely by context, but it projects the overall idea of who Elliott Smith was with greater success than all of his previous works. Even if we’ll never get to know how close to completion this actually is.
‘Roman Candle’ and ‘Elliott Smith’ saw insular Elliott, ‘Either/Or’ and ‘XO’ found his door nudged ajar and ‘Figure 8’ really began to mine his vast ambitions. And now, in his death, ‘From A Basement On The Hill’ ironically becomes his most alive sounding record. There seems no more fitting description for it. It entertains all those possibilities, touches polar emotional peaks and is as self-assured as it is inherently unsure. It’s filled with psychoanalysis over self-depreciation, it’s characteristically disapproving but rarely as insular as you’d expect, it has a sense of humour, it has hope. Even if that sometimes seems like something to hide behind, it’s still there. And with pinpoint timing, rhyming “thief” with “commander in chief” and mention of keeping a “fat man feeding in Beverly Hills”, he even hits George W Bush from beyond the grave.
This is an album that wears away the nib underlining his standing as an exquisite craftsman. The way the sour acoustic backing of ‘Pretty (Ugly Before)’ is mixed by bitter barroom piano into something smooth and palatable. The way something as lonely as ‘A Fond Farewell’ slowly reveals itself to be a complex weave of subtle melodies and collaborating harmonies that just fall together. And the way ‘Coast To Coast’ and the wonderful ‘King’s Crossing’ pull you in like collapsing stars, drums reverberating like a distant earthquake, melodies raining down like a storm in a kaleidoscope, sifted through artful psychedelic slow-motion. That’s where he was escaping to.
Pretend he’s not dead, if it helps. In a way he’s not anyway, never will be. This record feels like it could have been recorded this morning, or last night more likely, and handed straight over, still hot. It has a firm pulse. But it provides no answers, clues or obvious discarded pieces of evidence. All it provides is one final vivid snapshot of a man who will be mourned constantly. And that, if you reason with yourself, is all you really want anyway.