“The thing I liked about punk in the first place is still alive in my head… you have to keep changing and not get stuck in a little box, and not become, like, a connoisseur of yourself.”

The years after Figure 8 were spent severing some relationships and starting others. He reached out to Jon Brion (who had made contributions to the last couple records), but the sessions were aborted amidst Smith’s deepening drug use. He picked up with David McConnell, a partnership that lasted for months and then just petered out. His albums were typically tracked across a few locations, but this was a different beast entirely — eleven people are listed as having a hand in recording. The scattered nature of Basement is all too evident. Like Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods, released the next year, it’s an overloaded album, oppressively loud in places. But where S-K wanted to lacerate, Smith seems to have intended just to be human: detuned guitars and sloppy drumming and buried vocals were the order of the day. Decisions that he once would’ve excised — or not made in the first place — were left in: a hokey backwards-guitar figure at the end of “Pretty (Ugly Before)”, a full minute of Abbey Road-style warmups leading into “Shooting Star”, the insertion of Bible-belt ramblings and nature noises, a 30-second McConnell sound vignette that was bizarrely inserted into the middle of the record. Details that might’ve been mawkish had he not killed himself now read as poignant or (even worse) predictive. “King’s Crossing” is the best example, with its infamous call-and-response. “Give me one good reason not to do it,” he sings, and his girlfriend responds “Because I love you”. The exchange was borrowed from live performances of the song, and her answer is mixed incredibly low, as if its handlers were embarrassed by its implications. For every darkly funny moment (“I’m going on a date with a rich white lady/ Ain’t life great”?) there are a half-dozen glancing jabs at the industry and addiction. So stirring in the minute-long intro, his underwater piano surrenders to an overstuffed mix.

And yet, while he strained not to be a connoisseur, his tendencies followed. Possibly the meanest thing he ever recorded, “A Distorted Reality Is Now a Necessity to Be Free” references his mom and assigns a date to an overdose before introducing Barrett to Buddy on that self-pitying chorus: “Shine on me, baby/ ‘Cause it’s raining in my heart”. Backed by his sexist guitar figures, shielded by a Leslie cabinet, he falls flat on the line “God knows why my country doesn’t give a fuck.” “Memory Lane” transmutes the blackbird of “Distorted” into McCartney’s, his nylon-like guitar pitched as uncomfortably high as his antsy vocals. “Let’s Get Lost” suffers from a similar issue of tempo: Smith’s vocals are unclear, his sense of tension is nowhere to be seen. There is a gem, though: “Don’t Go Down” starts with Flaming Lips-style warmup, then a wry couplet (“I met a girl/ Snowball in hell”). The pace is woozy, the plea gripping. His squalling guitar bed points to the earth, but he sings like a man scaling a treacherous peak.

Clearly, Smith had been suffering for as long as anyone could remember. Interviews with friends and collaborators depict a man with a casual relationship to death, a guy who didn’t cry for help so much as haul ass away from it. Though he had reportedly dismissed nearly all of his addictions in the last year of his life, a fundamental presence remained. When a musician commits suicide, albums become records, and lines become testimony. Explanations are owed; points of return must be identified. Discography informs biography, but even for the best cases, biography is a low-res rendering of a protected picture. Of course Smith’s recorded history intersects with his artistic output, but that could be said of practically anyone. The search for answers implies that the questions are fully understood. Even if Elliott Smith were alive and peaceful, From a Basement on the Hill would be a frustrating mess. But because he’s dead — and this is hard to admit from someone who holds context so loosely — a maddening patina has accrued. This one eludes my grasp.