Heatmiser

Heatmiser operated only briefly in the 1990s from Portland, Oregon, yet the band’s three studio albums and assorted EPs of tightly wound indie rock endure chiefly because Elliott Smith left to pursue solo work; the music itself drew much of its tension from the friction between Smith’s melodic instincts and Neil Gust’s darker, more abrasive writing style. Fellow members also built lasting careers afterward: Gust launched the pop/rock band No. 2, bassist Sam Coomes formed the indie-pop duo Quasi with then-wife and Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, and drummer Tony Lash, who produced several Heatmiser sessions, later worked behind the board with the Dandy Warhols, Death Cab for Cutie, and the Minders. Three decades after the 1993 debut Dead Air, that ongoing interest spurred Third Man Records to release the 2023 archival compilation The Music of Heatmiser.

Smith and Gust first met as college students in Massachusetts in the late 1980s, where they started the short-lived group Swimming Jesus; after graduating in 1991 they moved to Portland and recruited Lash plus bassist Brandt Peterson to form Heatmiser. The quartet played Pacific Northwest shows and self-released a six-song demo cassette in 1992 before issuing Dead Air on Frontier Records the following year. Frontier also put out the 1994 album Cop and Speeder and the five-song EP Yellow No. 5. By 1996 Smith’s two acclaimed solo albums had made clear that Heatmiser was no longer his main focus. Caroline released the Tony Lash-produced Mic City Sons that October, with Coomes now handling bass after Peterson’s departure. Critics praised the record as Heatmiser’s finest, yet it arrived just as the band was dissolving, so any potential breakthrough was cut short. Smith told an interviewer in 1997 that a Virgin contract had been signed, though no album followed. The members kept collaborating on one another’s projects: Quasi toured with Elliott Smith in 1997, and both Smith and Coomes contributed to No. 2’s 1999 album. In 2002, shortly before Smith’s death in 2003, he and Gust discussed recording another Heatmiser album and even tracked a new song. After Smith’s passing, later listeners turned to the band’s catalog as part of his artistic development; in 2023 Third Man Records collected early demos, tracks from out-of-print singles, live radio broadcasts, and other rare early material on The Music of Heatmiser.