A previously unreleased Elliott Smith song, “Ocean,” has now been made available for all to hear online.
Heaven Adores You, a documentary about the late Smith, debuted in summer 2014 and has been making the rounds at film festivals since then. The Nickolas Rossi film contains rare footage and unreleased music. Kevin Moyer produced much of Smith’s music and stopped at Portland’s Radio Project for an interview about the documentary, during which he debuted “Ocean.”
The new track was actually recorded in 1984 when Smith was just 14 years old, according to Consequence of Sound. The song is almost haunting, with its reliance on keyboards and Smith’s low vocals. Lyrically it is similar to his later work, if somewhat simpler, with its deep emotional tone. Moyer spoke about the backstory of the song, parts of which have been quoted below.
It’s a song I don’t think anyone has ever heard before. … It’s from his Texas days. At the very beginning of the film, we show Texas and his good friend Pickle, Steve Pickering. And it’s basically Elliott when he’s young, before he came to Portland, these guys, they got together and they were playing music for the sake of playing music. They were doing Led Zeppelin songs and covers, stuff like that. I think it was a group: Steve Pickering, Steve Smith (who was Elliott before he changed his name), a girl named Kim and another guy named Kevin and a guy named Mark, I think. Different variations of these kids would get together at Steve Pickering’s house and play music and make music.
So this song is something from 1984. Elliott was 14 years old. … It’s interesting because it’s one of the first songs that as they were writing, Elliott would make lyrics for it. It’s keyboards, guitars, and Elliott singing. They did the keyboards and guitars first, and the Elliott came back and Steve Pickering convinced him, for demo purposes, to sing. I don’t think Elliott was a singer at that point, but they kind of pushed him to sing it, and he did. It’s probably one of the first songs that they did that actually has lyrics.
You can listen to “Ocean” below at the 32-minute mark.
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