"GIVE ME one good reason not to do it..." Lines like this from King's Crossing mean the last album from Elliott Smith will always be pored over as an extended suicide note from its creator.

Smith died a year ago, from a knife to the heart.

The wounds of a life of drugs and despair are plain to see here, in a fantastic testament recorded before the vultures arrived. Smith's gentle, passive whisper, his wonderful melodies and his grim determination to stay on his desolate course makes for sad, bittersweet listening.

He intended this to be his White Album but nothing here has the universal sweep of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Smith's self-hatred, nihilism and misogyny will always scare the faint-hearted. Yet this is a magnificently human album, with moments of true beauty etched from personal chaos.

Smith joins the rabid death club brooded over by Nick Drake. Like Drake, Smith came to live the life he sang about.

From the outsider of Roman Candle's No Name #1 ("where I go, don't you follow..."), to the elegiac wave of A Fond Farewell; Smith's songwriting didn't develop so much as emerge fully formed. From A Basement distils all that has gone before.

Added to the blend of Beatles-style pop and acoustic fragility is a new, disturbing edge. The off-kilter psychedelic guitars of Coast To Coast and Strung Out Again show Smith characteristically undisciplined. Although the sadness of its creation will forever cast a shadow, this is a landmark album; a beautiful last post from one of rock's underdogs.

Updated: 09:07 Thursday, October 28, 2004