Heatmiser
Cop and Speeder

THE REVIEW

I begin this review by saying that Heatmiser is a band from Portland from the 90s that had a slight "Grunge" vibe, but with their own personality. They stood out in the mire... no, that doesn’t work. That's not the point. The point is that Heatmiser is Elliott Smith and Neil Gust's band (the big guy featured on the cover of Roman Candle), which formed when Elliott graduated from Hampshire College with a thesis in philosophy and political science and returned to his father's Portland. It's 1991, but that's not the point.

The point is that Elliott Smith and I fell in love at first sight in a living room of some apartment in Battersea. We both had a headache and the gloominess of the morning after the night out, both needed something else as we observed the empty cans left on the table and that's how it was. Cupid struck my ass at the first chorus of the first song on his first album... "I'm a roman candle, My head is full of flames".

This is how one falls in love, without thinking, believing it's a matter of chance, but it's not true: there's always an explanation for everything. Elliott Smith is a Cesare Pavese with battered jeans and a guitar to play and I already loved the one who was only armed with a pen. Both live off synthesis, both strip away any formal vanity, both are aliens, both speak of loneliness in the multitude, both write about wild nights and the morning headache post-wild night, both kill themselves living, both just kill themselves, perhaps in solitude.

Heatmiser is not Elliott Smith's side project. They are the project before fate decides the priorities. Indie-Rock in the classic sense of the term, somewhat generational with its ripped jeans and greasy hair, a bit fuzzy, but built on melody without giving up rhythmic variants not for everyone. A simple version of something extremely simple made by Fugazi deciding to make simple songs.

Cop and Speeder was released in 1994, a few months before Roman Candle. Fourteen years later, in the shadow of the best songwriter of his generation, in the distance of success and red carpets, a distance from a contract with Caroline, a distance from a sad legend, this album (their best according to the writer) remains confined in the shadow, reinforcing once again my idea that bad luck is always the best of all reasons. I am only consoled by the fact that from so much bad luck something capable of making blood pump in the right way, of making you feel a bit more alive, occasionally emerges.