7/1/2023 0 Comments Retrospect lyricsIt’s a shimmering record, clean and epic in sound, enveloping the listener with the confrontational sadness of his songs. “Black Ram” is a cleaner sounding record, David Lowery guides the band towards a crisper sound, showcasing Molina’s voice as if he were on a stage, the band forming not just music that surrounds him, but also the curtains, the lighting, and the set pieces. It is one of the most realized recordings the band made, epic in its desolate loneliness and ache. Albini found that not only was recording Magnolia Electric Co easy and fluid but explains that “Chicago was like a second home for him, he was loved here and found a few collaborators here.” Albini’s production style fits the music perfectly, allowing open space for the band to feel and dance with the music making it all sound unforced, unrehearsed but never sloppy. The Albini tracks are the most realized from the set, perhaps from the comfortability of recording in Chicago surrounded not just by his bandmates but also with the various Chicago musicians and other folks that provided an almost second home for Molina. Steve Albini remarks, “His approach to recording reminds me of stories I’d heard about Dylan, Van Morrison and a few other eccentrics, where he would just get the band going on a basic form and see how it ended up… there are some marvelous unscripted moments on all of his sessions, and you can occasionally hear the surprise in his voice that oh, hey I guess this is the chorus then.” And the songs were coming quickly, Albini shared that Jason came prepared but would introduce songs every day that he had written the night before, it was a very loose process. They set to business quickly and with purpose but also with the familiarity and ease of people who knew each other intimately that allowed for creativity in the studio. The band recorded quickly, not just due to the fact that studio time is expensive, but they were pros, already a chugging precise machine. To listen to a Jason Molina song is to dip a toe into a darkness, a pool of existential ache that if you are lucky finds you only as an observer, a listener and if you suffer from of the same issues as Jason then his songs are a mirror for what lurks inside. Here was a man, just seven years down the road to his eventual death laying bare what was driving him towards explaining what was firing inside of him, while at the same time pushing away those who loved and were committed to him the most. On this, the ten-year anniversary of Jason’s death, Secretly Canadian has reissued this amazing collection in a deluxe wooden box on four LP’s. This set was released in a beautiful wooden box, the original included a DVD and quickly went out of print. In 2006, Molina and his band made a series of incredible recordings that followed the release of the first Magnolia Electric Company record, What Comes After The Blues (Secretly Canadian) that would become the Sojourner box set, four LP’s recorded with Steve Albini (Nashville Moon), David Lowery (Black Ram), Sun Session (four songs recorded at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis) and Shohola, which consists of Jason and his guitar. These albums set the groundwork for a generation of musicians to help paste feelings of loneliness, broken bravado, and shaky love into the squalor of jagged feedback, steel guitars, and ramshackle sounds that cut straight through the ears into the consciousness of the listener. His work with Songs: Ohio shifted into Magnolia Electric Co, a fully realized band capable of encapsulating and reimagining the same feelings and sounds records he and his bandmates grew up with: Gram Parsons, Return of the Grievous Angel, Townes Van Zandt’s Flyin’ Shoes, The Band, and of course Neil Young’s Ditch Trilogy. His creative process was fueled by a recognition of darkness, resulting in incredibly confessional and stark albums. Seven years prior to his death he was a man on fire. “I didn’t choose to go down this road, I didn’t choose to be sick”-”North Star,” Jason MolinaĪ decade ago, alone in his Indianapolis apartment, Jason Molina died, his body no longer able to keep up with what it kept calling for.
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