Here’s a track from 2004’s New Moon, the second posthumous Elliott Smith release following his death in 2003.
While the album released prior to this one (2004’s From a Basement on the Hill) was in the works but unfinished when Smith died, this one is a collection of unreleased tracks mostly recorded a decade earlier in his career. A lot of newer fans name this as their favorite Smith album, which bugs me because it’s the one Smith release with which he had zero involvement.
‘Fear City’ is a track from the 2007 Elliott Smith compilation album New Moon, which included songs recorded during sessions for the mid-90s albums Elliott Smith and Either/Or.
This album and 2004’s From a Basement on a Hill were the two major posthumous releases after Smith’s 2003 death (which was initially reported as a suicide but later classified as a possible homicide — the investigation remains open).
The Random iTunes Fairy has a thing for Elliott Smith. Today’s SOTD is the seventh Smith tune to pop up on Random Weekends, and the third from the double album New Moon.
I don’t know how that stacks up against other artists. I’ve long regretted that I never kept detailed stats of Random Weekends so I could do exactly the kind of analysis I’m wondering about now. But my gut tells me Smith is better represented than most.
Today’s Random Weekend selection is a track from Elliott Smith’s posthumous 2007 release, New Moon, a collection of unreleased tracks. These aren’t songs he was working on when he died in 2003, but rather outtakes from the sessions of two of his earlier records.
As with most of Smith’s music, particularly from that era, this song is a) acoustic and b) about drugs.
Elliott Smith’s New Moon was released posthumously in 2007 and contains outtakes and discarded tracks from the recording sessions of his second and third albums.
Given that those records, Elliott Smith and Either/Or are two of his finest, this is a solid collection, all the more effective for being released after his suicide.
Meet Me In Montauk 