6 full albums from Elliott Smith's teenage years found online

The late Elliott Smith died almost twenty years ago in the midst of his sixth studio album. Now, six full albums from his high school music career have been uploaded onto YouTube and unearthed to the larger public by Pitchfork.

Before he was the renowned guitarist and singer-songwriter, Elliott Smith was Steven Paul Smith. After his parents divorced when he was six, he lived with his mother in Texas before moving to live with his father in Portland, Oregon when he was fourteen.

While in high school living in Oregon, Smith wrote and performed in a band with three other friends: Garrick Duckler, Jason Hornick, and Tony Lash. Their music is what hardcore fans have been searching for since Smith began deflecting inquiries into his high school music career.

Jayson Greene, author of Once More We Saw Stars and journalist and editor at Pitchfork, went on a deep dive through the Elliott Smith fan base's journey rediscovering the solo-artist's high school works.

He published his own endeavour on the American magazine site unravelling the mystery of the six albums yesterday. It includes interviews with one of the fans responsible for the albums making their way online and with Elliott Smith's high school friends.

According to Greene, 20-year-old fan Cameron McCrary hunted down copies of the music for years, originally passed around by hand on cassettes.

He, along with other fans of Elliott, doggedly hunted down surviving copies, emailing Portland record stores. Eventually he came in contact with Lash, who sold some of the works to another Elliott Smith completist. They then worked on uploading what they found online.

The six albums found were attributed to several different band names. Three albums, Any Kind of Mudhen (1985), Still Waters More or Less (1986), and Menagerie (1987) were released under the name Stranger Than Fiction.

The 1988 album The Greenhouse was made under the name A Murder of Crows and Trick of Paris Season from 1989 under the name Harum Scarum.

Analysing the music from the cassettes found, Greene revealed that some of Smith's lost 1985 - 1989 works were the beginnings of what would later become some of his greatest hits.

A Murder of Crows even included an early version of 'Condor Avenue,' which would later appear on Elliott's debut solo-album, Roman Candle.

While Smith may never have wanted the recordings to be found by the public, as Greene repeatedly mentions, they shed light on his journey into being the prolific and beloved musician remembered today.

Now the mystery of Smith's early works, fueled by fans' obsession with them, can be laid to rest. For those curious in exploring Smith's early artistic years, his works have been uploaded to YouTube, with details about what could be found about each song in the video captions.