No Rock And Roll Fun

HE LEFT THIS MESSAGE FOR YOU...: Reports from the work on Elliott Smith's final album, Songs From A Basement on a Hill suggest everything's on track for the planned release this autumn. Producers Rob Schnapf and Joanna Bolme are working with the bits Smith left behind - songs, notes, and chats with people who were around while he was working - to make this probably more complete and in keeping with the original vision than some of the work made from the leftovers of dead artists (Free As A Bird, anyone? The last seventy-five Virginia Andrews novels?). It can surely only be a matter of time before Smith joins Buckley and Drake in having a emotomentary in perpetual rotation on BBC Four.