From a Basement on the Hill by Elliott Smith

From a Basement on the Hill, Elliott Smith's sixth and final studio album, came out on Anti- in the US in October 2004, nearly a year after he died, and it's impossible to hear without that weight. He had worked on it from 2000 into 2003, through delays and personal troubles, imagining it as a double album, and he left it unfinished, some songs missing nothing but a vocal. His family brought in his old producer Rob Schnapf and his ex-girlfriend Joanna Bolme to sift through more than thirty recordings, with the estate making the final calls.

What survives is Smith pushing outward: instrumental stretches, and guitars that crunch and swell far heavier than the whisper he was known for, wrapped around songs that stare straight at addiction and depression. It became his highest-charting album in the US, and the critics were with it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.