Legendary ’90s indie rock group Heatmiser — comprised of Elliott Smith, Neil Gust, Tony Lash, and Brandt Peterson — have released their compilation, The Music of Heatmiser.
The legend of Heatmiser has only grown in the last several decades since the Portland rock greats released what would end up being their final album, 1996’s Mic City Sons. Now, The Music of Heatmiser provides a new and unique opportunity to hear the quartet at their most elemental: ferocious and passionate, with miles of melody and a shocking immediacy for a band that was still in the embryonic stages.
This compilation spans the group’s earliest years, including a tour-only demos cassette from 1992 (which also shares this compilation’s namesake), a previously lost-to-time session at Portland radio station KBOO, and a wealth of previously unreleased material that showcases Heatmiser’s true essence as a band — like the group’s previously unreleased cover of the Beatles’ “Revolution,” recorded for and rejected by an ad agency but fully restored here in revelatory fashion thanks to Lash’s work excavating and re-mixing the bulk of the music found here.
“I’ve really enjoyed revisiting this music for the music. It’s great to remember the times that we worked together very well, and how that reflects in the music itself,” Peterson says. “When Elliott became Elliott Smith, Heatmiser immediately got eclipsed by that—so we all left it behind,” Gust adds, “…but when Tony started sending me these recordings, I remembered how fun this was, and how much we loved it. It’s loud and ferocious, and what we were doing back then is what I still look for in music today.”
Longtime fans will doubtlessly be delighted by the treasure trove on display here—and newcomers now have the perfect entry point for discovering this cultishly beloved band’s catalog.
