Elliott Smith ... One Year Ago...

From Chromewaves.net, a link on San Francisco Bay Guardian:

"looking at the after effects of Elliott Smith's death, one year on and talks to engineer Dave McConnell, who believes that From a Basement on the Hill is not the album Elliott would have wanted. He says that the family-endorsed mixes stayed too close to Smith's past works whereas he had intended the album to be a stylistic step forward. You can hear some of those more experimental tangents on tracks like "Coast To Coast" and "Shooting Star", with their denser, rawer production values - even after being mixed and mastered under the ministrations of Smith's family, they still stand in pretty stark contrast to the more conventional, prettier numbers on the record. Is this the direction that Smith would have ultimately moved in or just a detour in his musical path? We can only speculate. As it is, it's difficult to listen to the record without considering the context of its creation, without hearing some manner of foreshadowing of his death. Grim, but true."

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