Third Man Records is reissuing the final album from the Elliott Smith band Heatmiser ahead of its 30th anniversary. The new edition of 1996’s Mic City Sons is out July 25. It includes a remastered version of the original 12-song record, along with 12 rarities and previously unreleased tracks (such as a “Rock Version” of the Elliott Smith classic “Christian Brothers”). See the tracklist and a teaser video for the reissue below.
The surviving members of Heatmiser—vocalist and guitarist Neil Gust, bassist Sam Coomes, and drummer Tony Lash—decided to reissue Mic City Sons after working with Third Man on the Music of Heatmiser anthology. “I started to go through and found stuff that was pretty much finished, but just never mixed, and some other things that we had run out of time to fully develop,” Lash stated in a press release. “It brought me back to that time in a really visceral way. It made me appreciate this creative space and creative life that we were able to sustain there for a little bit. If only we could have somehow worked our way through all the interpersonal issues. I think the record shows that we could be a really good band.”
Heatmiser released three studio albums—Dead Air (1993), Cop and Speeder (1994), and Mic City Sons—before disbanding, in part, due to Elliott Smith’s rise as a solo artist. “He became such a thing on his own, and then just disappeared from the plans we’d made together,” Neil Gust said. “It sucked.”
Check out “The 50 Best Indie Rock Albums of the Pacific Northwest,” featuring Mic City Sons at No. 30.
Mic City Sons:
01 Get Lucky
02 Plainclothes Man
03 Low-Flying Jets
04 Rest My Head Against the Wall
05 The Fix Is In
06 Eagle Eye
07 Cruel Reminder
08 You Gotta Move
09 Pop in G
10 Blue Highway
11 See You Later
12 Half Right
13 Cocksucker’s Blues
14 I’m Over That Now
15 Silent Treatment
16 Burned Out, Still Glowing
17 Rocker in C
18 Get Lucky (Demo)
19 Everybody Has It
20 Dark Cloud
21 Dirty Dream
22 You Gotta Move (Demo)
23 Christian Brothers (Rock Version)
24 Untitled Instrumental
