Singer/songwriter Elliott Smith is scheduled to head back into the studio in mid-February to record a half-dozen songs for the follow-up to last year's XO. Producer Tom Rothrock said the session will likely be one of about four that Smith will do for his fifth solo album.

"We're going to keep doing this throughout the year," Rothrock said Tuesday. "When it's time for him to have a new record, we'll have 20 songs ready to go, and we'll put a record together out of it. In the past, that's how he's made his records. XO was definitely the exception in that we just went in and made it in two months straight."

Rothrock, who produces Smith with partner Rob Schnapf, said it's too early to describe the new material. However, he did reveal that the singer/songwriter began work on XO 's successor as early as October, when Smith recorded for five days at England's Abbey Road studios -- best known as the site of most of the Beatles' recording sessions.

At that session, Rothrock said, he and Smith used a 30-piece string section for one song. "[Drummer] Joey Waronker stopped by; he was in town with R.E.M.," the producer said. "We started about five or six songs, and mostly completed them that week. It was really productive."

The Beatles connection is of particular note in light of "Baby Britain" (RealAudio excerpt), a song on XO with a taut guitar rhythm evocative of the Beatles' "Getting Better."

In the fall, Smith said the riff was not intended as a conscious comment on the Fab Four.

"People look at things so commercially now," said Smith, who received an Academy Award nomination last year for "Miss Misery" (RealAudio excerpt), from the film "Good Will Hunting." "If you do anything that's referential, the assumption is that you're trying to cop that style. I'm not looking to put on someone else's disguise. People constantly learn things by figuring out what that cool thing [is] in some old song that somebody did."

Smith's string of recording sessions is expected to stretch throughout 1999, according to Rothrock, who said he didn't foresee a completed album before the end of the year. He said the mini-sessions are especially useful for a musician as busy as Smith, who manages to write a lot amid a full touring and promotion schedule.

"He can just work in these weeks in the studio," Rothrock said. "And I think he really looks forward to them."