Heatmiser Release 30th Anni. Edition of "Mic City Sons"
THIRD MAN UNVEILS 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
OF HEATMISER’S LANDMARK MIC CITY SONS
PORTLAND, OR-BASED INDIE ROCK BAND’S THIRD AND FINAL ALBUM
NEWLY REMASTERED AND REIMAGINED AS A TWO-LP SET
EXPANDED WITH RARE DEMOS AND UNRELEASED TRACKS
MIC CITY SONS – 30TH ANNIVERSARY REMASTER ARRIVES VIA THIRD MAN FRIDAY, JULY 25
PRE-ORDERS/PRE-SAVES AVAILABLE NOW
Third Man Records is proud to announce a very special 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 will be available via Third Man on standard black vinyl and limited-edition Sunset Pink Transparent & Starry Night Blue Glitter vinyl on Friday, July 25. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now. An exclusive teaser detailing the album’s storied history is streaming now on YouTube and social media.
WATCH MIC CITY SONS ALBUM TEASER
PRE-ORDER/PRE-SAVE MIC CITY SONS – 30TH ANNIVERSARY REMASTER
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 shared 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). Unfortunately, the sessions were fraught with interpersonal conflict, almost every moment a battle: Lash was a burgeoning gearhead, while Smith liked rough edges; Coomes sometimes felt Schnapf and Rothrock were breathing down his neck; and Gust lost his confidence as he and Smith grew apart due to his longtime friend and collaborator’s increased focus on his burgeoning solo career.
“He became such a thing on his own, and then just disappeared from the plans we'd made together,” Neil Gust says. “It sucked.”
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 undeniable friction, Mic City Sons – released by Virgin subsidiary Caroline Records thanks to the major label’s concern over the tensions roiling within Heatmiser – 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 producer, mixing, and mastering engineer, Lash dug in, unearthing early demos and songs that didn’t make the final cut.
“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.”
Indeed, while the new additions to Mic City Sons offer even more glimpses of animosity, they also 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” (which Gust wrote about “being pissed at Elliott”), and the somber “I’m Over That Now,” for which Lash took a track of Smith singing and playing acoustic guitar and then fleshed it out with the rest of the band. 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.
“Since the record doesn’t change, I’m the one that changes,” Neil Gust says. “I just forgot how good we could be together.”
HEATMISER
MIC CITY SONS – 30TH ANNIVERSARY REMASTER (Third Man Records)
Release Date: Friday, July 25, 2025
Tracklist:
Get Lucky
Plainclothes Man
Low-Flying Jets
Rest My Head Against The Wall
The Fix Is In
Eagle Eye
Cruel Reminder
You Gotta Move
Pop In G
Blue Highway
See You Later
Half Right
Cocksucker’s Blues *
I’m Over That Now *
Silent Treatment *
Burned Out, Still Glowing *
Rocker In C *
Get Lucky (Demo) *
Everybody Has It*
Dark Cloud*
Dirty Dream*
You Gotta Move (Demo) *
Christian Brothers (Rock Version) *
Untitled Instrumental *
* Bonus Tracks
Photo Credit: JJ Gonson
