There was always something combustible about Heatmiser. The Portland quartet — Neil Gust, Sam Coomes, Tony Lash, and the late Elliott Smith — never moved quietly. And nowhere is that friction more potent, more electric, or more heartbreaking than on Mic City Sons, the band’s third and final album. Now, nearly 30 years after its release, Third Man Records is giving the record a second life with a deluxe reissue that adds unearthed demos, unreleased tracks, and a fresh remaster that reveals both the cracks and the brilliance in its foundation.

Being released on standard black vinyl and a limited sunset pink transparent and starry night blue glitter variant, the expanded edition pulls listeners deeper into the final days of a band unraveling while making arguably the best music of its life.

Originally released in 1996 on Caroline Records, Mic City Sons isn't what some might call just a breakup album, it’s a document of creative friction at its most chaotic and inspired. Smith was already drifting toward the solo career that would make him an indie icon. Gust was battling self-doubt as his longtime collaborator drifted away. Coomes clashed with the album’s producers, Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock. And Lash was chasing a different sonic vision altogether. “It sucked,” Gust recalls bluntly. “He became such a thing on his own, and then just disappeared from the plans we'd made together.”

But somehow, through all of it, the songs held. The original record played like a tug-of-war between Smith’s introspective melancholy and Gust’s melodic punch, its brilliance sharpened by tension. It earned praise from Entertainment Weekly and Pitchfork, who later called it “a glorious, complicated swan song” and ranked it among the best indie rock albums to ever come out of the Pacific Northwest.

The 30th anniversary edition only adds to that legacy. Lash, now a respected producer and engineer, dug deep into the archives to find unfinished sketches, alternate takes, and songs that were left on the cutting room floor. Among the highlights: a bruising demo of “You Gotta Move,” a turbo-charged run through “Christian Brothers,” and unreleased cuts like the deceptively upbeat “Dark Cloud” (written, fittingly, about being mad at Smith), the stripped-down beauty of “I’m Over That Now,” and the cathartic rocker “Burned Out, Still Glowing.”

“It brought me back to that time in a really visceral way,” Lash says. “It made me appreciate this creative space we were able to sustain there for a little bit. If only we could have somehow worked our way through all the interpersonal issues.”

The new collection arrives on the heels of 2023’s The Music of Heatmiser, a Third Man anthology that reintroduced fans to the band’s early demos and live material. But Mic City Sons is the crown jewel, a record that now, with distance and hindsight, feels even more essential.