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Third Man Records is proud today to release the 30th anniversary edition of Heatmiser’s landmark 1996 third and final album, Mic City Sons. Remastered and reimagined as a two-LP opus containing a set of rare demos and unreleased tracks, the expanded new version of Mic City Sons is available on standard black vinyl and limited-edition Sunset Pink Transparent & Starry Night Blue Glitter vinyl.
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WATCH MIC CITY SONS ALBUM TEASER
A 12-song dynamo set to explode, Mic City Sons is both the sound of Heatmiser breaking up in real time as well as an era-defining slice of brilliance that lingers like the after-effects of lightning in the sky. Founded in 1991, the Portland, OR-based band – comprised of Neil Gust (vocals/guitar) Sam Coomes (bass), Tony Lash (drums), and the late Elliott Smith (vocals, guitar) – had won critical acclaim and a growing fan following for their darkly combustible brand of indie rock, earning them a major label deal with Virgin Records. Heatmiser built their own studio in a rented house in Portland and set to work, joined by producers Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock (with whom Smith would go on to record his classic solo albums, Either/Or, XO, and Figure 8).
Last month, the band shared the cacophonous unreleased track, "Silent Treatment." It was written by Gust alone in the studio about his bandmate, the late guitarist/vocalist Elliott Smith.
“This one is about Elliott giving me the silent treatment,” Gust says. “I didn't know what else to sing about.”
LISTEN TO “SILENT TREATMENT”
Those themes play out over the course of the original record – Smith thought the raging “Cruel Reminder” was about him (Gust wrote it about an unrequited crush), Coomes hated the chanty, brash “Get Lucky,” to name a couple of instances. Despite the friction, Mic City Sons – released by Virgin subsidiary Caroline Records – proved an invigorating marvel laden with tempestuous sonic magic and scrappy songcraft, prompting applause from such publications as Entertainment Weekly and Pitchfork (which later declared it among “The 50 Best Indie Rock Albums of the Pacific Northwest,” praising “an obvious, visionary tug-of-war between Smith’s guitar melancholy and Gust’s upbeat melodies. It’s a glorious, complicated swan song.”).
The surviving members of Heatmiser had largely put Mic City Sons behind them but having previously partnered with Third Man to release The Music of Heatmiser — a 2023 anthology of their self-released 1992 EP, demos, live recordings, and other previously unreleased material – they decided to mark the album’s upcoming 30th anniversary by linking up with the label to give their final work a well-deserved refresh. Now a mental health counselor, Lash dusted off his producing and engineering skills to dive in, finish up demos, and mix other recorded but abandoned material.
“I started to go through and found stuff that was pretty much finished, but just never mixed, and some other things that we had run out of time to fully develop,” Tony Lash says. “It brought me back to that time in a really visceral way. It made me appreciate this creative space and creative life that we were able to sustain there for a little bit. If only we could have somehow worked our way through all the interpersonal issues. I think the record shows that we could be a really good band.”
The new additions to Mic City Sons reiterate that Heatmiser were truly onto something special. Highlights include demo versions of the album’s mournful “You Gotta Move” and a hepped-up take of Smith’s “Christian Brothers” along with such previously unheard tracks as the straight-ahead rocker, “Burned Out, Still Glowing,” the deceptively bouncy “Dark Cloud," and the somber “I’m Over That Now.” Now, nearly 30 years later and more than 20 since Smith passed away, Mic City Sons stands as the creative peak in Heatmiser’s incendiary but all-too-brief career. Yes, there was discord, but there was also joy — and a band with boundless talent that had the potential to continue on.
“I just forgot how good we could be together,” Neil Gust concludes.
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HEATMISER
MIC CITY SONS – 30TH ANNIVERSARY REMASTER
(Third Man Records)
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