A new album featuring unreleased material from Heatmiser—the Portland band with which Elliott Smith played before his solo career took off—is coming out this year. Third Man Records will release the 29-song compilation October 6. Today, the label has released the early track “Lowlife,” along with a video of the band performing it in Fort Collins, Colorado. Watch below.
Elliott Smith formed Heatmiser with guitarist and vocalist Neil Gust and drummer and producer Tony Lash in 1991; bassist Brandt Peterson soon joined the lineup. Heatmiser released their first cassette, The Music of Heatmiser, at shows and local record shops in 1992. The new Third Man compilation features all six tracks from the cassette and also replicates its title and artwork.
In a press statement, Gust explained, “Tony found a bunch of forgotten recordings and started mixing them and sending them to me. We were struck by the freewheeling energy of the band; you could hear how much fun we were having. In 1992, we could barely afford the studio so it all had to be done really fast. When we put the cassette together, we wanted it to start like a punch in the face. That’s ‘Lowlife.’”
After The Music of Heatmiser, the group released three studio albums before disbanding in 1996. Heatmiser were inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame in 2015.
Read the feature “The Untold Story of Elliott Smith’s Teenage Band.”
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The Music of Heatmiser:
01 Lowlife (’92 Cassette)
02 Bottle Rocket (’92 Cassette)
03 Buick (’92 Cassette)
04 Just a Little Prick (’92 Cassette)
05 Dirt (’92 Cassette)
06 Mightier Than You (’92 Cassette)
07 Can’t Be Touched (Cavity Search Single)
08 Wake (Cavity Search Single)
09 Stray (Cavity Search Single)
10 Dead Air (Demo)
11 Sands Hotel (Demo)
12 Mock Up (Demo)
13 Cannibal (Demo)
14 Candyland (Demo)
15 Still (Demo)
16 Man Camp
17 Laying Low
18 Bloody Knuckles
19 Father Song
20 Glamourine
21 Meatline
22 Revolution
23 Blackout (Live on KBOO)
24 Bottle Rocket (Live on KBOO)
25 Dirt (Live on KBOO)
26 Still (Live on KBOO)
27 Candyland (Live on KBOO)
28 Don’t Look Down (Live on KBOO)
29 Lowlife (Live on KBOO)