Linda Smith
Songwriter and recording artist Linda Smith has a gentle but unconventional experimental style that continues to evolve as she adds new entries to her storied catalog. Her work with four-track production in the late '80s found her at the beginning of a home-recording movement that would set the pace for decades of indie rock that followed. During her most active times, Smith's music was limited mostly to obscure cassette and 7" releases, but her early approach to bedroom pop was revisited on the 2021 compilation Til Another Time (1988-1996). Shortly after the release of the retrospective, Smith teamed with old friend and collaborator Nancy Andrews, rekindling the creative partnership the two had begun in the early '80s, for the set of new songs that made up their 2023 album A Passing Cloud. The following year, her reissue series continued, with her long-obscured albums Nothing Else Matters (1995) and I So Liked Spring (1996) both being pressed on vinyl and shared to streaming platforms for the first time.
Smith was born and raised in Baltimore but relocated to Brooklyn, New York in the 1980s. There, she played in several bands, including the Silly Pillows and the Woods. She purchased a four-track cassette recorder to make demos to share with her bandmates but quickly found herself drawn to the specific charms and limitations of home recording. When the Woods disbanded around 1987, Smith continued working on solo recordings, eventually collecting some of her earliest material on the 1987 cassette-only The Space Between the Buildings. Her sounds ranged from moody, ethereal balladry to fuzzy proto-indie, all of it bearing similarities to the C-86 movement and the burgeoning K Records scene of the same period. Throughout the late '80s and early '90s, Smith released multiple collections of her songs, including cassettes with small lo-fi labels Shrimper and her own Preference Recordings, her 1995 album Nothing Else Matters, and several 7" singles with indie labels Slumberland and Harriet Records.
She continued making music into the 2000s, releasing two new albums, Emily's House and Something New!, in 2001 and collecting older material on compilations like 2014's All the Stars That Never Were. Smith remained active in music, and her early home recordings received a new wave of attention in 2021 when Captured Tracks issued the retrospective collection Til Another Time (1988-1996).
When Smith was still living in Baltimore in the early '80s, she and her housemate Nancy Andrews had a band called Ceramic Madonna Head (with Plastic Arms) that was active until Smith's move to New York. While digitizing archival cassettes, Smith came across a tape of some of Andrews' songs from that time and reached out to her old friend with the idea of working on a new album together. The two traded song ideas remotely until they had reached an album's worth of material, which they released in 2023 as the dreamy yet direct album A Passing Cloud, the duo's first work together in over 30 years. In 2024, Captured Tracks reissued Smith's mid-'90s efforts Nothing Else Matters, formerly available only on CD through indie label Feel Good All Over, and I So Liked Spring, an album that had only ever existed on various cassette editions. Both albums were pressed on vinyl for the first time and also released on streaming services.
© Fred Thomas /TiVo
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I So Liked Spring
Alternative & Indie - Released by Captured Tracks on 1 Mar 2024
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Nothing Else Matters
Alternative & Indie - Released by Captured Tracks on 1 Mar 2024
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Till Another Time: 1988-1996
Alternative & Indie - Released by Captured Tracks on 12 Mar 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
A Passing Cloud
Alternative & Indie - Released by Grapefruit on 17 Mar 2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Salad Days
Alternative & Indie - Released by Captured Tracks on 10 Jan 2024
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Fin De Fete
Alternative & Indie - Released by Captured Tracks on 31 Jan 2024
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Spare Me the Details
Alternative & Indie - Released by Grapefruit on 20 Feb 2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Untitled 1-10 Plus 1
Pop - Released by Linda Smith on 30 Mar 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Variation 4 (Arthur Loves Plastic Remix)
Dance - Released by Linda Smith on 15 Nov 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Sunday List Of Dreams
Rock - Released by Linda Smith on 1 Jan 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Music That Touches the Heartstrings
Lounge - Released by Notes of Celebration on 1 Jan 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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In This
Alternative & Indie - Released by Captured Tracks on 8 Feb 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Same Girl, Different Day
Folk - Released by Linda Smith on 1 Jan 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Best Me for Christmas
Lounge - Released by Linda Smith on 23 Nov 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Greatest Hits - Journey To Now
Folk - Released by Linda Smith on 1 Jan 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo