Elliot Smith’s self-titled sophomore effort is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special re-release along with a previously unreleased live album, Live at Umbra Penumbra. The set will arrive on August 28 via Kill Rock Stars. Producer and engineer Larry Crane, who is also the official archivist for the Smith family, oversaw the re-release, remastering the album from the closest sources to the original Elliott Smith first-generation mixes and crafting Live at Umbra Penumbra from a high-quality cassette provided by Casey Cyrnes.
The 25th-anniversary edition of Elliott Smith is available to pre-order and will also come with a 52-page coffee-table book filled with handwritten lyrics, reminiscences from Smith’s friends and colleagues, and two dozen previously unseen photographs from the era by JJ Gonson, who also shot the album’s cover photo.
Leading up to the reissue’s release Kill Rock Stars will be working with a handful of artists to release covers of Smith’s songs from this album. Artists confirmed for the project thus far include Bonny Light Horseman – the new project of Anais Mitchell (Hadestown), Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats) and Josh Kaufman (Muzz, Bob Weir, Josh Ritter), Marisa Anderson, MAITA, Prateek Kuhad and Califone, with more to be announced at a later date. Califone will kick the covers releasing an Amazon Original cover of “Needle In The Hay.”