Elliott Smith: Roman Candle

As we're reviewing contributors here, we can't end this column without mentioning our own editor, Larry Crane. The last time he passed through town, he dropped a vinyl copy of this remastered album off with me and it's become one of my favorite spins of late. I'm a big fan of Elliott's music, but I rarely listened to this album as the excessive string noise and extremely strident upper mids and top end was almost painful; it certainly wasn't enjoyable. Luckily, Larry's done a great job of sonically rescuing this album. "I found a DAT copy if the final master (which seemed more like an assembly of tracks than a real master) and I went to work in Pro Tools LE at home, reducing loud acoustic guitar squeaks, hard S sounds and other tiny bits of spectral repair with iZotope's RX plug-ins. I spent almost ___ weeks working on the tracks. Then I oversaw mastering at SAE with Roger Seibel, where he performed slight EQ and limiting. We tried to make it no louder than Either/Or from 1997 so it would sit well in his catalog. I did get to remix one song from this record for an upcoming An Introduction to Elliott Smith album. Going back to the original 4- track recordings and working on the fidelity and then mixing at Jackpot! brought a lot of depth out of the song that you don't hear on the Roman Candle mixes. It makes for a different listen." (www.killrockstars.com) -JB