I have lost count on how many unreleased songs have surfaced since his death in 2003, but here we go again, a new track by Elliott Smith has appeared on the internet. The song, unfortunately incomplete, was a warm-up during a 1997 live session that had been forgotten in the vaults of the college radio station WMUC.
Elliott was beginning to play ‘Division Day’, but abandoned the song after just a few seconds, saying he had to wake up and asking to warm up with another song before they taped the show. He then started playing this folky new tune, entitled ‘Misery Let Me Down’, for just 2 mere minutes, not even finishing it, before going back to the taped session.
It is funny how often Elliott is qualified of ‘folk troubadour’, a genre that could not be further from the music he was playing when he was in the post-grunge Heatmiser band. Most of his songs were actually closer to punk than folk, but that’s just my opinion. Nevertheless, there are songs like ‘Misery let Me Down’, different and more in the folk tradition, with a charming melody, his delicate finger picking while he is singing ‘If you see misery going through the things in my place/Won’t you do me a favor and come invade my space’
I said it before, but it is always a bitter-sweet feeling to get a new Elliott Smith’s song.
You can download ‘Misery let Me Down’ here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?29p8qj9bvly1rze