Wire playlist: Linda Smith
February 2024
Linda Smith in The Wire 481. Photo: Jonna McKone
To accompany her interview with Linda Smith in The Wire 481, Claire Biddles compiles and annotates a playlist spanning the home-recording musician’s career
| The Woods “Miracles Tonight” | 0:02:32 |
| Linda Smith “There’s A…” | 0:03:04 |
| Linda Smith “Only a Moment” | 0:02:28 |
| Linda Smith “Afternoon Tea” | 0:02:19 |
| Yours Truly “Qualms And Misgivings” | 0:02:58 |
| Linda Smith “Untitled 3” | 0:03:17 |
| Linda Smith & Nancy Andrews “Curtains” | 0:03:14 |
Home recording pioneer Linda Smith has been enjoying a resurgence of late, both for her re-released 1980s and 90s music, and for recent recordings made after a 20 year absence. The rediscovery of her post-punk and 60s influenced DIY pop – in part thanks to the 2021 compilation Till Another Time – has inspired Smith to start recording again, both on solo projects, and in collaboration with Nancy Andrews for last year’s duo album A Passing Cloud.
This year, Smith’s long out of print 1990s albums I So Liked Spring and Nothing Else Matters are getting reissued on vinyl, while she continues to work on a variety of projects from her home in Baltimore.
This playlist offers a brief chronological look at Smith’s recordings, from her short-lived group The Woods, to her self-released cassettes, and her later collaborations and experiments. Across all the tracks – which span almost 40 years – Smith’s complex arrangements, beautiful melodies and DIY aesthetic shine through.
The Woods “Miracles Tonight”
From Miracles Tonight/Love Me Again This Summer 7" (1985)
Although Smith is known for the solitary pursuit of home recording, she got her start making music in a more communal context. After a stint in Baltimore underground band Ceramic Madonna Head, she moved to New York City and formed jangly post-punk group The Woods with three other recent transplants to the city. Their sole 7" features this Smith composition – an introduction to her penchant for 1960s pop melodies and folk-influenced harmonies – which also opens the group’s recent compilation So Long Before Now.
Linda Smith “There’s A…”
From Do You Know The Way…? (1988)
Smith bought her first 4-track recorder just before moving back to Baltimore in the late 1980s. Between 1987 and 1991, she recorded and self-released four cassettes which all combined a resolutely DIY approach with sophisticated songwriting and inventive arrangements. The second of these, 1988’s Do You Know The Way…?, features the enigmatic “There’s A…”, which sounds like Nancy Sinatra duetting with a ghostly, synthesized counter-melody. It also appears on Till Another Time, the 2021 compilation released by Captured Tracks that kick-started a major re-discovery of Smith’s work.
Linda Smith “Only A Moment”
From Nothing Else Matters (1995, reissued 2024)
Smith returned to the cassette format – albeit via a record label, Shrimper – for 1996’s I So Liked Spring, also recently reissued. For lyrics, Smith used poems by Charlotte Mew, whose work at the intersection of the Victorian and Modernist movements is reflected in Smith’s gleefully anachronistic arrangements. “Afternoon Tea” is a perfect encapsulation of this: a baroque take on indie pop that pairs drum machine rhythms with pastoral lyrics about elm trees and glow-worms, sharply enunciated by Smith.
The only release by duo Yours Truly, Domesticated represents an anomaly in Smith’s catalogue as the only album on which she performs, but does not write. The lyrics and music are written by Paul Baroody, with Smith singing, providing occasional guitar, and recording on her 8-track. On the new wave-influenced “Qualms And Misgivings”, it’s fun to hear Smith in a different kind of pop mode, adopting an icy, almost European tone to match Baroody’s rudimentary synths.
Linda Smith “Untitled 3”
From Untitled 1-10 Plus 1 (2021)
Smith’s first release of new recordings in two decades, Untitled 1-10 Plus 1 is a collection of instrumentals that furthers her experiments with sound collage, found on earlier tracks like “Only A Moment”. Using digital home recording techniques for the first time, “Untitled 3” sees Smith layer voice recordings with electronic sound and creeping synthesizer, bass and xylophone lines. Although experimental by nature, the track shows that Smith’s ear for intriguing arrangements and counter-melodies remains present and correct.
Read Claire Biddles's interview with Linda Smith in The Wire 481. Subscribers can also read the article online via the digital magazine library.
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