Self-Titled CASSETTE

Smith made this one mostly in two houses in Portland, cutting nearly every instrument himself and producing most of it alone, with only a couple of outside hands: Neil Gust's guitar on "Single File," Rebecca Gates' harmony vocal on "St. Ides Heaven." It came out as his first full-length for Kill Rock Stars and sat quietly for years before critics circled back, with Pitchfork later placing it among the best of the 1990s. The one single, "Needle in the Hay," turned up on screen in The Royal Tenenbaums.