You spend years writing songs, finally getting that recording contract, then spending weeks or months recording. The label seems excited about the record, telling you that you're gonna be the next big thing, and when you finally hold that CD in your hand and hear your songs on the local radio you know that you've made it. Except that the record seems to have disappeared in just a few weeks, failing to ignite, and you're back to touring and writing and recording. Maybe the second record sells a little bit better than the first, maybe you get some airplay on one of the music video stations or an invite to be interviewed on NPR, and you think, this one will be the one that breaks you, that makes it big. But it doesn't, and maybe you change labels and repeat it all again.

That kind of always on the verge of making it big and being disappointed can be almost harder to take than never getting the chance to make the record in the first place. It's the kind of despair that has driven some artists to suicide (in the case of Nick Drake, for example, at least a deep enough depression that may or may not have led to suicide) or simply to quit making records or even retool their expectations (I'm thinking here of Aimee Mann, who switched to releasing CDs on her own label, where she makes more money off selling 50k albums than when she sold 500k with the major label). The problem is that when an artist looks back over those two, three, or four albums that almost were, they see all those darling songs, that if only the artist had produced a different way, if only those songs had a different sound, then people would have heard how good they were.

That kind of thinking is what leads to many a live album (although many live albums are also released simply as ways to fulfill contractual obligations), the best example of which is Billy Joel's Songs from the Attic where he resurrected a number of songs from his back catalog and presented them in much better arrangements and productions, utilizing the live stage to provide the excitement that many of the songs had lacked in their appearances on his albums. The Unplugged sesssions in the 90s was the latest method by which an artist could get people to listen to those old songs with new ears, a trend that reached its logical conclusion with Alanis Morissette covering her entire breakthrough album, Jagged Little Pill, in an acoustic version that was sold at Starbucks. In that case, it was a case of overkill, and detracted from the much stronger unplugged effort that Morissette had done for MTV where she had tried to get people to actually listen to songs she had recorded since that album.

Extra Extra is similar to both Joel's and Morissette's efforts, wherein Darden Smith went on an archaeological expedition to unearth songs of his that had been buried in time and forgotten, providing new spins on them. While not live (with the exception of one song, "Talk to Me"), Darden's covers of his own songs drop much of the production that had originally been used on the songs to try and make them more immediate. None of the songs here sound like they used much more than four tracks to record them, and sometimes sound like they had been recorded live in the studio. All of the arrangements are different than the originals, and most of 'em sound like they had been slowed down, something that fits in with the direction Darden had been heading with his most recent albums, which exchanged the full band with background singers for the introspective folk singer-songwriter. The song that this works best on is "Loving Arms," which is just an electric bass, Darden on piano, and his voice. (This is one of those cases where I really wish I could play the piano by ear so I could work out the piano part of this song, which is about as perfect a piano love song as you can get.) Other songs it doesn't work quite so well on, as the original of "Frankie and Sue" has much more of a bounce in its full-blown production and "Midnight Train" which loses a lot of the building drive that characterizes the original.

None of the songs came from his debut release, Native Soil, which is unfortunate because it is probably the one album of his that had songs that needed saving, but I guess he felt he had already done that service when he re-recorded three of them for his next release, the eponymous Darden Smith, which provides two of the songs for Extra Extra. Nothing was picked from his collaborative effort with Boo Hewerdine, but that may have been for contractual reasons. Four each are culled from the next two albums, Trouble No More and Little Victories, and the remaining two come from Deep Fantastic Blue. As such, Extra Extra is like a greatest misses compilation for Darden Smith, and worthwhile for introducing people to him. With the exception of "Loving Arms," however, I like every original better than its version here, so it fails in its rehabilitation of his catalog for me, but then I'm a fan of all those albums and not someone who had missed them upon their first release; that is, this album wasn't meant for me. I do enjoy it, however, in much the same way that I listen to a live album, because it provides that thrill of recognition of your favorite song, but enough variation that makes the song fresh and alive.