Elliott Smith’s 1995 self-titled second album will be reissued with a previously unreleased live album, Live at Umbra Penumbra, to mark the record’s 25th anniversary. The set will arrive August 28th via Kill Rock Stars.
To preview the collection, Kill Rock Stars shared Smith’s gripping and restless rendition of “Big Decision” from Live at Umbra Penumbra. The concert took place September 17th, 1994, at the Portland cafe Umbra Penumbra, and the record captures the earliest known recording of Smith performing as a solo act.
Along with Live at Umbra Penumbra, the 25th-anniversary edition of Elliott Smith will feature a remastered version of the original LP. Producer and engineer Larry Crane, who serves as the official archivist for the Smith family, oversaw the project, remastering the album from the closest sources to the original Elliott Smith first-generation mixes and crafting Live at Umbra Penumbra from a high-quality cassette provided by Casey Cyrnes. “There are fan-traded MP3s out there of this show, but when people hear what I was able to extract from this original tape, they’ll be shocked,” Crane said in a statement.
The 25th-anniversary edition of Elliott Smith is available to pre-order and will also come with a 52-page coffee-table book filled with handwritten lyrics, reminiscences from Smith’s friends and colleagues, and two dozen previously unseen photographs from the era by JJ Gonson, who also shot the album’s cover photo.
In the weeks leading up to the reissue’s release, Kill Rock Stars will be sharing a handful of new Smith covers, starting with Califone’s take on “Needle in the Hay,” which is available exclusively via Amazon. Other artists confirmed for the cover series include Bonny Light Horseman, Marisa Anderson, Maita, and Prateek Kuhad.
