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.
