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The hope for this project from the start was to preserve Elliott's unreleased work in the best quality possible. There are so many songs that Elliott wrote and recorded that are excellent, but haven't been released. To really explain this, within this archive is a "best of the archive" collection that has 80 tracks that never made it to an album.
Elliott's influence on other songwriters has been immense. He seems to always pop up in conversations with musical creatives and he's kind of become a ubiquitous reference, especially in the studio. His music doesn't have the same kind of backing that an artist owned by a major label would, so I think that's why he always seems like he's just on the periphery.
I like that he's music's best kept secret and I'm glad to be a part of the fan community. I've enjoyed seeing how his music has been kept alive through various projects and shares. Still, there's always a chance that some of his music could be lost to time. I'm still dying to hear a good quality studio version of "Stained Glass Eyes" or "Flowers for Charlie" or "You Make It Seem Like Nothing" or "Abused."
A lot of these tracks have never seen any kind of official release or master by a professional audio engineer who could replicate Elliott's production style. Elliott's talent wasn't only his songcraft, but also his audio production skills. This can be seen in the difference between songs mixed by Larry Crane and songs mixed by Fritz Michaud, which the community tends to think is more in line with what Elliott would have wanted. That kind of mastering can only be achieved with access to the original recordings for the individual instrument and vocal parts.
Fingers crossed that we'll see the official release of some of these tracks next year for the 20th anniversary of From a Basement on the Hill. And fingers crossed that the audio production will sound like something Elliott would have been happy with.
This will probably be the last update ever to the archive. So it can serve as a snapshot of things up until 2023.
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Elliott Smith's last album, From a Basement on the Hill, wasn't finished before he died in 2003. What was released in 2004 was an album that had been mixed by Rob Schnapf and supervised by Joanna Bolme. The album wasn't the vision that Elliott had for it, and it couldn't be, because a lot of the recording was left unfinished.
The bit of controversy that surrounds the posthumous album's creation is that the main producer that Elliott was working with to record the album, David McConnell, wasn't consulted. He supposedly has 3 years worth of handwritten notes by Elliott about the direction he wanted to take the album.
This lead to things like the song "Ostriches and Chirping" being included in the final product, which wasn't anything that Elliott had ever touched, but a little experiment that McConnell had created himself. Also, Elliott apparently didn't intend for the song "Pretty (Ugly Before)" to be on the album either.
Elliott had wanted From a Basement on the Hill to be a double album, and was inspired by The Beatles White Album. That's why this mix is called From a White Basement on the Hill.
Before his death, Elliott
Smith asked Fritz Michaud to master a lot of his rarities. The album New Moon album was released in 2007, and audio engineer Larry Crane was chosen to remix a lot of the same tracks for its release. Many fans consider the Fritz mixes to be better and more in
line with Elliott’s style. This compilation collects all of the mixes
by Fritz Michaud that are available.
This is a more condensed version of Part 9 of the archive.
"Part 1 (Best Quality)" is a collection of all of the highest quality live versions of cover songs that are available.
"Part 2 (Low Quality)" is a collection of all the lower quality cover songs, but the best quality tracks available.
There is at least one track of each cover song Elliott played live that was recorded.
One of the earliest collections of any Elliott Smith material was called Confusion and it was a bunch of live versions of unreleased and off album songs. This compilation reimagines that collection by incorporating songs from all of the new live sources that have been collected over the years. The title Smile at Confusion comes from the song “Dancing on the Highway.”
