This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Few singer-songwriters have made sadness sound as sweet as the gifted Elliott Smith.
Now, nearly a year to the day after he died from two supposedly self-inflicted knife wounds to the chest, Smith has bequeathed us the sweetest, saddest gift possible: The magnificent and transfixing From A Basement On The Hill, which he worked on for the last two years of his troubled life.
Whatever demons Smith may have been battling, they did not destroy his ability to create soaring beauty from the depths of despair. Basement’s 15 songs — all fully completed before his death, it is said — are the type of unflinching and intensely personal fare you’d expect from the composer of Miss Misery. References to longing, loneliness, drugs, death and suicide are ever-present. Cry-for-help lyrics like, “I can’t prepare for death any more than I have” and “I don’t know where I’ll go now and I don’t really care who follows me there” chill with their 20/20 hindsight.
Yet somehow, despite its often-bleak content, Basement isn’t the endless down you might anticipate. Partly this is due to the bravery and purity of Smith’s openhearted approach, which lights a candle of hope in his emotional darkness. Partly it’s the skilled craftsmanship he displays as he moves from post-psychedelic Beatle-pop to ragged rock and fingerpicked country-folk with effortless grace. And partly it’s because Basement sounds like a completed work and not the typical posthumous patchwork of scraps and leftovers.
But mainly, it’s because you can’t help but feel some small measure of relief that Smith has finally escaped his sadness.
