You’ve likely heard by now. But to provide the brief details: under the moniker UUL, Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty has released three new mixes of (largely) unheard Elliott Smith material culled from collaboration sessions between the two musicians. The result is vastly divergent than anything Smith ever released in his lifetime. What’s certain is that the sessions were intended to take his music in a new direction and that Smith was onboard. However, just how happy he would have been with the final product can never be known.
SPIN wrote the most in-depth article on the topic thus far, which you can read here. The piece clearly contains suspicion as to the ethics of releasing these mixes, in this way, now, but also acknowledges that Doughty did possess the tapes bearing the material and the sessions were clearly an intentional collaboration. According to a statement from Doughty: “Elliott did the vocals, acapella, specifically for me to slice-and-dice over beats. I didn’t seek permission to put this out. This is a collaboration Elliott and I began a long time ago, and this is the form we intended.”
It’s fascinating to hear that the lyrics for “The Record” ultimately became “Bottle Up and Explode!” from XO. Other parts of songs eventually saw release in songs on Smith’s posthumously released New Moon. You can check out all three tracks for yourself below.
