Elliott Smith’s sixth album was released a year after his death, cobbled together by his former producer and his former girlfriend from a batch of recordings he’d completed before committing suicide.

It’s difficult to call From a Basement On a Hill a proper Elliott Smith album because there’s no way of knowing which of these songs, if any, he would have chosen to include, and which other tracks he might have never gotten around to recording (let alone what sequence he would have chosen, what artwork, and all the rest).

People who were closer to Smith during those final sessions weren’t consulted when the album was put together and claim that some of the choices ran contrary to Smith’s wishes. But crying out from beyond the grave, Smith sounds as good as ever on these songs and it’s a strong album regardless of the controversy surrounding its release.

Only one more album, New Moon, would be released under Smith’s name. It contained unreleased songs from the mid to late 90s recorded during sessions for his self-titled album and Either/Or.

From a Basement On a Hill contains plenty of good songs but it seems necessary to go with ‘A Fond Farewell’ as my Song of the Day. A line from the song’s chorus kind of sums up the sad finish to a great artist’s too-brief life and career: “It’s just a fond farewell to a friend who couldn’t get things right.”