Songs: Ohia - The Magnolia Electric Co.

I've been slightly putting off writing about this record because I just don't think I can do it justice. In the five years I've had a copy, this album has continued to grow on me and I still find new parts I love with each listen. Whilst I consider The Lioness to be my favourite Jason Molina album, I think it's safe to say that Magnolia Electric Co is the greatest. If people ask me where to start, it's almost wrong to suggest anywhere other than here; sure, he has released some incredible albums aside from this, but this is surely the canonical Molina album. Both ends of his career are represented here as the turning point from Songs: Ohia to Magnolia Electric Co. Start here. Play the album over and over again. Fall in love with it.

The second Farewell Transmission starts I get shivers down my spine. I've heard so many covers of this song that it's become a treat to hear the original. If this album is the starting point, then it's pretty fitting that the first song people will hear is his most famous and one of his best. I'm sure some would say it's over-rated, but I think it gets the praise it deserves for very good reasons. It's a perfect moment spread across seven minutes. The transition from that into I've Been Riding With the Ghost is perfect too, with the ghostly backing vocals brilliantly at odds with the hints of country throughout. Just Be Simple rounds out the trio of opening songs, all of which have become fan-favourites. When the first three songs in row are all easy additions to a theoretical Greatest Hits album, you know you're listening to something special.

Side B starts off a bit strangely with country singer Lawrence Peters taking on the vocals on The Old Black Hen followed by Scout Niblet singing Peoria Lunch Box Blues. It possibly shows that Jason wasn't necessarily thinking at the time that this album would be the landmark or turning point it would become; who would make such a choice on an album that would be hailed (by me, at least) as his greatest? The demos show how the songs sound with Jason singing - his voice sounds different on The Old Black Hen, perhaps a sign that it made sense for someone else to sing it; his version of Peoria is nice, but Scout's vocals add so much to it. The studio version hints back to Jason's lo-fi days, but with some drums tastefully brought to the front of the mix.

After the quiet end of Peoria Lunch Box Blues, John Henry Split My Heart opens up with a bombastic riff, briefly giving way to a few bars of piano and the opening lines, before launching back into the huge sound of the intro. The demo holds very few clues that the studio version would hit so hard. The outro, reprising the lines of "Long dark blues", is another perfect moment. Hold On Magnolia is the gentle closer that no one knew the album needed. Part of me wonders how the album would feel if it and John Henry were swapped around - perhaps it would have been too much to go from Magnolia into that start of John Henry. It's a reflective ending, and feels like a goodbye for the Songs: Ohia of old before fully becoming Magnolia Electric Co. Maybe it would have felt too forced to have both opener and closer feature the same lines. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Jason's vocals are incredible on it either way.

There are moments throughout the album where you can hear Jason urging the other musicians on through the way he sings - halfway through Just Be Simple, towards the start of Almost Was Good Enough and, famously, at the end of Farewell Transmission. Much like with Ghost Tropic, you can picture them in the studio together at those exact moments, with Steve Albini doing some fine work behind the mixing desk.

You can dwell on the meanings of Jason's lyrics for endless amounts of time, but I've always found myself most strongly attached to individual lines - "Real truth is no one gets it right / Real truth is we're all supposed to try" and "I will be gone / But not forever" from Farewell Transmission (the latter the name I picked for my Jason Molina best-of I made for in the car - it was incredibly tricky boiling his work down to 80 minutes!). Also "If Heaven's really coming back / I hope it has a heart attack / When it sees how dangerous it is for guys like that", "Half I'm going to use to pay this band / Half I'm saving, cause I'm going to owe them" and "Hold on Magnolia" for its willing and repetition, but also when it's paired with "I think it's almost time". He was a great lyricist.

Anyway, I eventually bought a copy on my first trip to Truck Store in Oxford. I'd just accepted a job in the city and came up from London one Saturday morning to look at flats. Once I was done, I made the trip over to Truck to see what I was in for from what would become my new local record shop. I'd had a look at the website and knew that Karl, the guy who runs it, was a big Molina fan, so wasn't at all surprised to find a copy there that morning. Over the following years I filled a lot of gaps in my Molina collection there and have had some nice chats with Karl about them.

The reissue is lovely and much-needed - albums like this shouldn't be only available as second-hand first-pressings; they should be in every collection. William Schaff's artwork looks incredible and the demos, as mentioned, are not some fodder for the collectors, but fascinating alternative takes and nearly as important as the album itself. I was too late to get a copy with the bonus 10" (but will one day hunt one down), but luckily the mp3 download code includes the two songs from there. This is really very lucky because The Big Game is Every Night is another of Jason very finest songs. To think it was abandoned to be a Japanese bonus-track is mind-boggling. It's one of his longer songs, but feels effortless in its ability to keep your attention. It's a hidden gem in a career of countless gems.

A couple of years later I picked up a copy of the original cd pressing (in Amoeba Records) which also included the demos here, but with different names and in a different order - Farewell Transmission is called The Long Dark Blues (arguably a better name? Certainly a grander one),
I've Been Riding With the Ghost is I Made the Change and John Henry Split My Heart is You Can't Save Everything; Almost Was Good Enough is missing from both, but we have demos of Whip Poor Will (a song that would appear again years later on Josephine) and The Big Game is Every Night instead. I didn't know that they were the same demos when I bought it, but it makes sense that they would be, and I would have still bought it anyway.

I say this a lot, but I thoroughly and whole-heartedly recommend this album. No good record collection is complete without it.

Format: Double 12", gatefold, picture sleeves
Tracks: 17
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 15/03/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Magnolia Electric Co. - Trials & Errors

A few months ago I wrote about Magnolia Electric Co. on here for the first time. Any regular readers will have to start getting used to hearing about Jason Molina as my collection of his music only keeps on growing. It saddens me that soon there'll be no more to hear, but in the meantime I keep discovering more and more beautiful music.

Trials & Errors is a live album recorded in shortly after they formed (so to speak) in 2003 and captures the band in a way no other recording I've heard has. I was lucky enough to see Magnolia Electric Co. once and this albums leads me to believe that every show was as incredible as the one I saw. There's a furiosity to way they play the songs that reminds me why I first fell in love with them along with hints of their gentler moments which are why I keep finding more and more in their music. If someone were to ask me where to start with Jason Molina, I'd be tempted to say start here; sure there are other important albums, but this one I think will grab most potential listeners.

A few of the songs made it onto other records (or found their way here from other records) but there are so many great songs that didn't appear in any other form - 9-minuters like Such Pretty Eyes For a Snake and Almost Was Good Enough as well as my favourite on the album The Last Three Human Words. That they had such great songs that never made it onto a studio album terrifies me - what other incredible songs did they play live that no one will ever hear again?

I hadn't planned to buy this record when I did. After moving to Oxford I discovered that the guy who runs Truck Records is huge Jason Molina fan and I knew they'd be a great source of his albums. I'd bought a few from there before and saw this one on a day when I was buying a couple of other albums. I'd considered buying it but figured I was already spending enough money that day. I think he saw me studying it and really strongly recommended buying it when I got to the till. I was easily convinced - I mean, I knew it was going to be good, so the guy telling me it was awesome was enough to make me add it to the armful of records.

Needless to say, I'm very glad he did convince me. I'm sure I would have bought a copy eventually, but sooner if definitely better than later in the case of this album. It's just such pleasing music to fill my ears that I wish I'd heard it sooner. I really can't recommend this album enough.

Format: Double 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £17 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 11/04/10
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Magnolia Electric Co. - Josephine

I'm ever-increasingly pleased that I was introduced to Magnolia Electric Co. when I was; they could have very easily passed me by and I would live the rest of my life having never seen Jason Molina play live. His music is the gift that keeps on giving and we should all count ourselves lucky that he wrote quite so many songs in his too-short life.

On a slightly-hungover morning on the 6th of September 2009 I was woken by a phone call from my friend Jon. There was a folk festival happening in Porthcawl Pavilion that day but it had massively undersold so the organisers were basically handing out tickets to people who they knew just to help fill up the room. Jon knew one of the organisers and was getting together a car-load of people. Three things made me go: I had nothing else to do that day; Adem was playing (who was pretty much the only name I knew on the bill) and I'd been enjoying his covers album, Takes; and finally, because I was leaving Cardiff soon to move to London so thought it'd be nice to spend the day on the beach with some of the friends I'd made there.

So I met up with Jon, Stubbs and another friend of Jon's and we drove to Porthcawl (which I'd never been to before). The Pavilion was a lovely setting for the bands playing that day - they'd laid out tables like a 1900's ballroom and there was a huge chandelier hanging overhead. We watched some nice bands (including Aidan Moffat and Adem) and had ice cream on the beach (which seemed particularly odd given that these were guys I'd gotten to know by going to sweaty punk shows). Magnolia Electric Co. were second to last that day and Stubbs was very excited; I remember him passionately telling me about the singer's old band Songs:Ohia and how the bands had transitioned with an album called Magnolia Electric Co. You know when someone is that excited about seeing a band that it'll be at least half decent.

Magnolia Electric Co. blew me away that day. I have three main memories of their set: a general feeling of amazement; Jason's incredible voice; and the drums. I can't imagine many people think of drums when they think of Magnolia Electric Co., but that day they sounded so incredible and were being pounded, all the while set to these beautiful songs. Maybe it was the acoustics of the room, but it worked for me. Map of the Fallen Skies on Josephine has some pretty heavy drums and always reminds me of that day. I have no idea whether they played it (or the names of any of the songs I heard that day) but it always makes me think back to that day late-summer Sunday in Porthcawl. I doubt Jon knows how grateful I am that he called me that morning and paved the way for me to discover Molina's music. I should probably say something to him.

After Magnolia finished we all sat there a little bewildered and agreed that they were incredible. Vetiver were still due to play, but we decided that nothing was going to top the last band and went home. I set about hearing more Magnolia Electric Co. and got Josephine on cd from my sister for my birthday that year. I knew from the opening minutes of O! Grace that I hadn't misremembered how good they were. Six years later and I'm still digging through the huge number of albums Jason Molina recorded and each one is incredible - I get so excited when I find another album of his because I can't wait to hear the music within. It's not been entirely trivial to find all his albums (Truck Records and a few trips to the states have helped) but I'm enjoying the cadence at which I get to hear them.

I discovered shortly afterwards that two of my friends had become huge Jason Molina fans (after seeing him on the same tour but at End of the Road Festival) and we were all equally excited when it was announced that he'd be playing a show in The Railway Inn in Winchester with Will Johnson from Centromatic. Just to spell that out entirely, The Railway was the only venue we had growing up, where most of our friends had played, where we had our first drinks and where Friday nights would frequently end up. Very rarely did anyone famous ever play The Railway so we all decided it was well-worth the trip back home. On top of that, I was really keen to see Will Johnson having first heard him on a split with another of my favourite bands, The Paper Chase. 

But Jason got ill and the tour got cancelled. Gradually over the next couple of years it emerged he'd been an alcoholic and was in rehab. Things were starting to look promising but then he died on March 16th, 2013. My heart sank when I heard the news because I felt like I'd only just discovered his music; I wanted to see him play again so I could have the same feeling of amazement I'd had before and I wanted to know the songs he played so I could appreciate them even more. I still have the ticket from that Railway show that never happened. It's sad that he died so early, but I can take some comfort in knowing that he wrote a lot of great songs whilst he was here and that I can keep discovering them for years yet. Fittingly enough, Josephine ends with An Arrow in the Gale, a song that feels like an opener; his last album was to be my first and opened me up to a wealth of incredible music.

Format: 12", insert

Tracks: 14

Cost: £15 new

Bought: Truck Store, Oxford

When: 08/01/15

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: Download code