Heatmiser - The Music of Heatmiser (2023) Hi Res

Three decades on since Heatmiser shot through the Portland, Oregon, music scene like a comet disbanding just before the release of their major-label debut, Mic City Sons drummer Tony Lash has assembled a interesting curio of long-lost moments: demos, live radio sessions, B-sides and previously unreleased songs. It’s interesting to hear now-classics like "Dead Air" in their most elemental form; "Buick" sounds rawer than ever, and there is no mistaking the muscular Hüsker Dü overtones of "Lowlife." A demo of "Sands Hotel" really plays up how the guitar tone and jerking rhythm summon the twisting sexuality and sleaze of the old Vegas Strip. Stripped of production layers, the prowling bass of "Cannibal" sounds even more dangerous. A 1992 cassette version of favorite "Bottle Rocket" lifts the veil off Neil Gust’s vocals, pushing them right to the forefront in a show of clarity and vulnerability. It also reminds you how much Heatmiser did have in common with the Pacific Northwest grunge scene musically, if not in spirit: the sludgy, moody string rhythms sliced by serrated guitar, the pummeling drums. But there are also seeming nods to Fugazi, especially in the call-and-response vocals of "Bottle Rocket," swirling-to-the-edge-of-psych "Dirt," and "Mightier Than You" which comes careening out of the gate, threatening to spin out at any minute (in reality, this is tightly controlled mayhem). One-half of those vocals, of course, is Elliott Smith, and it will never not be a little jarring to hear the ultimate sensitive singer-songwriter max out his voice on tracks like the B-side "Just a Little Prick." Previously unheard "Man Camp" offers a small preview of Smith’s future musical bittersweetness even as his lyrics mock and spit at the chest-pounding "mythopoetic men’s movement" and drum-circle gurus like Robert Bly and Sam Keen: "A couple of weeks/ I'll be totally pure ... standing buck naked/ With the drum sticks poised." Little known "Laying Low" has a nervous, almost new wave energy. "Meatline" is punchdrunk on an almost jokey muscular swing, one enlightened step from rockabilly. New-to-you "Father Song" and "Glamourine" are solid even if they don’t cover new ground. There are also seven live tracks from a Portland’s KBOO radio performance and an irresistible cover of the Beatles' "Revolution"—a forgotten, never-used recording for an ad agency that feels like a bridge between Heatmiser and Smith’s solo career.