Jason Molina – Eight Gates – Album Review

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2020/07/30/jason-molina-eight-gates-album-review/

Molina and Johnson

Molina and Johnson was a collaboration between Jason Molina and Will Johnson of Centro-matic.  Although billed as a collaboration they tend not to sing together, mainly taking a song each on the album.  Nevertheless it hangs together well as an album.  Johnson's contributions are generally more accessible, tracks like Twenty Circles to the Ground, Don't Take My Night From Me and Lenore's Lullaby are decent quality, if fairly standard alt-country singer-songwriter fare.  All Gone, All Gone is a dark country-blues duet with Sarah Jaffe and is something of a highlight.

Molina on the other hand brings a more haunted, austere quality to his songs, more akin to his work as Songs:Ohia rather than Magnolia Electric Co.  All Falls Together features dead slow, spacey guitar and Molina's spooked-out wail.  The downcast strum Almost Let You In is the one true duet featuring both Johnson and Molina trading verses and it's pretty fine.  Later into the album, Now, Divide is mainly just the pair of them harmonising wordlessly over guitar rumbles.  For As Long As It Will Matter features a fairly forlorn keyboard part and Molina's broken-hearted lyric about "all my mistakes right where you'd hope for them to happen".  34 Blues is even sparser, just Molina and a lightly strummed guitar in the dead of night.

So although the album gives both artists equal billing, the further into the album we go, having started out like a Will Johnson album, later Jason Molina comes more to the fore.

Magnolia Electric Co - Josephine

Listening to Magnolia Electric Co's final album, released in 2009, Jason Molina and co have left behind the dark, slow burning rock of their earlier material and embraced country on the honky tone likes of O Grace! and The Rock of Ages.  Shenandoah and Whip-Poor-Will are equally informed by country music.  Thankfully the title track features some rougher, distorted guitar.  Further into the album The Handing Down is a welcome slab of spooked-out Crazy Horse-style rock, and it's followed by the desperate plea Map of the Falling Sky.  By the time the fine Little Sad Eyes with its eerie organ stabs and high lonesome rocker Knoxville Girl (not the Appalachian murder ballad) arrive you'll wonder why they front loaded the album with all those country songs.  

Magnolia Electric Co - Sojourner

Magnolia Electric Co's 2006 album Fading Trails proved to be just a taster for 2007's Sojourner box set, a treasure trove containing FOUR albums.  The first, Nashville Moon has Jason Molina and co gone full-on country rock with rockers Lonesome Valley, Montgomery and Don't Fade On Me, each of which appeared on Fading Trails.  Elsewhere?  We get a ragged, rocking take on Hammer Down, followed closely by No Moon On The Water, again rocking pretty hard leading nicely into the country soul Stones-y title track.  There are plenty of uptempo tracks preventing the pace from becoming too plodding, such as the bluesy strut of What Comes After The Blues or the country swing of Don't This Look Like The Dark.  North Star is a honky tonk ballad which gathers momentum throughout the song, swelling to a fine brew of sound.  This music truly is equal parts messy rock and honky-tonk country.

However it has nothing on the second disc, Black Ram.  For me this is everything that Neil Young's Tonight's the Night was made out to be, a dark, mellow yet angry night time rock album.  In The Human World has a simple, descending melody before the addition of strings sweeps the track along providing a perfect introduction.  Austere, grim guitars open the title track which just gets more beat down and heavier as the track progresses.  What's Broken Becomes Better and Will-O-The-Wisp are fine, doleful laments with hard electric guitars.  Gentle banjo introduces Kanawha which builds to a guitar solo that cold only be described as 'stonking'.  Which in the context of this, is a good thing.  The wounded Neil Young-isms are present and correct on the towering A Little At A Time.  Many songs, such as Blackbird and And The Moon Hits The Water would be quite ordinary but for the way the guitars are recorded, with such clarity and bite, they really lift each track to great heights.  It's a definite highpoint in the extensive catalogue of Jason Molina.

The third disc, Sun Session is the shortest at only four songs.  No let up in quality here - Talk to Me Devil Again takes a prime Neil Young sounding delicate riff and combines it with a little organ for Molina to sing his lament.  The other 3 tracks are equally strong, including a rootsy rendition of Hold On, Magnolia.

The final disc, Shohola, is something else entirely.  The bleakest, most-stripped down set here, it features Jason Molina alone with a guitar, as he wails softly through laments like Steady Now and Take One Thing Along.  Night Country and The Spell are grim, resigned and life-affirming, sharing the tone of Gillian Welch's most downbeat material.  Shiloh Temple is classic country folk of the kind that Townes Van Zandt used to play.  The Lamb's Song features such soft guitar playing you actually lean in to listen harder.  This collection is even more downbeat than Molina usually is, one for those long dark nights of the soul.

Possibly Jason Molina's defining project, and definitely one his most ambitious.  It contains some of his best work and is essential for anyone interested in his music.

Magnolia Electric Co - Fading Trails

Fading Trails was released in 2006. A brief album at 9 tracks over 28 minutes, it's drawn from four different recording sessions. Despite this, it hangs together really well as an album. The Magnolia Electric Co band environment really suits Jason Molina's brand of downtempo country rock. Don't Fade On Me has a plodding Crazy Horse feel to it (a good thing), and is the first of a trio of rockers which occupy the opening third of the album. Montgomery is a very pleasing stomp but it ends tantalisingly after less than two minutes, while Lonesome Valley is very much a Nashville style rock song (if you can imagine such a thing), wearing its (black) Stetson proudly, if crookedly while Molina unleashes some fine guitar licks.

A change of pace comes with the next pair of tracks, A Little At A Time seeks to emulate Neil Young's Wrecking Ball with added growl on guitar, while sparse piano is employed on The Old Horizon which is the closest thing here to his work as Songs: Ohia. What's a little frustrating is that these admittedly fine songs arrive, cast their spell and then leave while you're just getting into them. After the country strum of Memphis Moon, Talk To Me Devil Again features a wonderfully melancholy guitar part with a lightness of touch that just makes the song.

Finally we get the primitive acoustic blues of Spanish Moon Fall And Rise and Steady Now ending the album on a kind of uncertain note. It's a really fine collection of songs, and serves as a primer for the Sojourner box set.

Jason Molina - Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go

Jason Molina's second solo album under his own name came out in 2006.  Sounds rough and ready with the deceptively simple sounding guitar and piano of It's Easier Now underpinned by audible hiss. Tracks like Everything Should Try Again and Alone With The Owl are a real throwback to his work as Songs: Ohia.  It Must Be Raining There Forever sounds particularly desolate.  The final 3 tracks feature a drum machine, but not just any drum machine, this one is slow as molasses.  These tracks feel a bit more 'musical' for want of a better word.  Droning organ on It Costs You Nothing combines well with seemingly improvised piano before the slow drift of the title track where Molina lets loose on electric guitar (to a degree).  The whole thing is no easy listen, it's a good exercise in creating a dour atmosphere and maintaining it over an album.

Magnolia Electric Co - What Comes After the Blues

What Comes After The Blues was the first album proper by Magnolia Electric Co.  Released in 2005, it sees Jason Molina and co embrace the country rock vibe.  The Dark Don't Hide It puts the emphasis on the 'rock' with crunching Crazy Horse style riffs married to a Nashville y'all sway.  Country music for people who don't like country music, it's one of Molina's strongest rockers and his fine guitar work bears this out.  The second track The Night Shift Lullaby hands over lead vocal duties to Jennie Benford but it doesn't lack for intensity, with a country rock swagger, switching between hard-riffing electric and deftly plucked acoustic guitars.

There's a change of tack on the country soul of Leave The City with Mike Brenner's steel guitar joined by trumpet courtesy of Michael Kapinus.  However the ghost of Neil Young is never far away, and acoustic ballad Hard To Love A Man is every bit as good as any of Young's more stripped down moments.  Molina and Benford's harmonies evoke a modern day version of Neil and Emmylou Harris, while the Wurlitzer creates a timeless, eerie feel.  Give Something Else Away Every Day is a deathly slow trudge through molasses, worthy of Young's Ditch trilogy, here they get the slow, drowsy plod of Crazy Horse just right.  After this the album turns folkier, Northstar Blues and Hammer Down are spare, unadorned alt-country folk, with I Can Not Have Seen The Light taking a darker turn.

Dark country rock aficionados need to pick this one up.  A (brief) album of serious quality.

Jason Molina - Pyramid Electric Co.

Jason Molina released this solo album in 2004.  In contrast to the fuller sound of his band work, this was a return to the starker, sparser sound of earlier Songs: Ohia albums.  Entirely without percussion, the album features slow, lengthy songs of occasional electric guitar with some low key wailing from Molina.  The title track sets the tone, its low key, guitar rumbles are almost impressionistic in nature, particularly in the drifting coda where the merest guitar and whispered, wordless vocals occupy the final minute and a half.  Like the most downcast side of Bonnie Prince Billy, the glacial piano of Red Comet Dust and later the guitars of Spectral Alphabet conjure up a barren, lonely atmosphere, with lyrics on the latter such as "their names inscribed by death in a spectral alphabet".  Division St. Girl and Honey, Watch Your Ass are more familiar territory for Molina, slow, three chord guitar crawls.  Everything is barely there, even at high volumes you need to listen intently.  Later, Song of the Road is, if anything more downbeat, a minimal track based on a skeletal guitar progression.  So if you like Jason Molina at his most forlorn, and stripped back, this one's for you.

Songs: Ohia - Magnolia Electric Co

The final Songs: Ohia album is a curious beast.  Released in 2003, some consider it the first Magnolia Electric Co album.  It features a much fuller sound than any previous album put out be Jason Molina.  That sound is pretty much defined by opening track Farewell Transmission, which is a full throttle, seven minute, countrified Crazy Horse rocker.  I've Been Riding With The Ghost and Almost Was Good Enough have a similarly rocking, spooked-out feel.  It's light years away from the sparse crawl of early Songs: Ohia.

Just Be Simple shoots for the other side of the Neil Young coin, with a lightness of touch and a drumbeat that could have crawled off Harvest, guitars that twang and cooing backing vocals.  This country feel is ramped up with the first of two guest vocalists.  Lawrence Peters takes lead on The Old Black Hen and goddamn if it doesn't feel like a good old country tune from Nashville's heyday, particularly with the addition of fiddle and honky tonk piano.  It seems straightforward until the twist at the end of it when Peters sings "I was trying to sing the blues the way I find them."  On the other hand, Peoria Lunch Box Blues features high-pitched backing vocals from Scout Niblett, but this track has a haunted, bleak On The Beach feel.  

As if to remind himself that he's the mainman, Molina comes roaring back in on the harrowing John Henry Split My Heart.  Drums pound, guitar riffs whiplash back and forth, and there are few shafts of light in this particular heart of darkness.  The album finishes with the downbeat country drift of Hold On Magnolia, finishing on an uncertain, almost underwhelming note.  Hold on to what? Or for what?

This album's unrelenting intensity has the effect also of being the most accessible Songs: Ohia album.  A vital soundtrack for nights of rage, raging against the dying of the light.  And wallow in it.

Songs: Ohia - Didn't It Rain

After the woozy delights of Ghost Tropic, Jason Molina released quite a different sounding album in 2002 in Didn't It Rain.  It feels for first time like a band album rather than solo.  And it sounds like he's taken a dose of Neil Young.  The title track is like Young's Old Man but slower and darker with Jennie Benford providing a moody wordless vocal accompaniment, over clean and clear guitar chords.  The tension is ratcheted up a notch on the following track Steve Albini's Blues, where a simple, insistent two chord guitar progression lasts throughout the song as Molina and co softly moan "on the bridge out of Hammond".

Ring the Bell introduces a fuller, more rounded sound as the repetitive, loping chords sway back and forth.  Later, the album shifts to prime Zuma-era Crazy Horse with the swaying Blue Factory Flame.  The track is strangely addictive, as over eight minutes Molina and Benford sing repeatedly about being "paralysed by the emptiness".  After the brief Two Blue Lights the album concludes with Blue Chicago Moon.  Those disillusioned with Neil Young's more recent material could do worse than check this out, though it's beyond imitation, the track is unhurried, taking its sweet time to unfurl.  Molina again makes use of repetition, singing about "endless, endless, endless depression".

It's another fine album from Jason Molina, showing progression from Ghost Tropic, really getting into his stride on this one.

Songs: Ohia - Ghost Tropic

Album number five by Jason Molina under the name Songs: Ohia was released in 2000.  It's an odd, unsettling album but to my mind it's Molina's first great album.  Rather than announcing itself, it oozes through your speakers with Lightning Risked It All.  Ramshackle percussion and guitar provide the backdrop for Molina to gently moan about "the broad luck of blood on the water".  It's kind of spooky and mysterious, a mood that lasts through the album.  With the most minimal information on the album cover, it's hard to get what is being played on tracks like the old-timey, shimmering The Body Burned Away there appears to be a banjo with the merest of piano and a plucked guitar.  The music is almost impressionistic, it's hard to explain or replicate what;s going on.  If anything approximates an 'old school' Songs: Ohia track, it's the sparse, snail-paced No Limits On The Words, where a guitar twangs gently and Molina mumbles morosely, though seldom at the same time.  

A feature of this album are two instrumental title tracks, both featuring tropical birds.  They differ musically, the first is pedal-steel based and drifts along with a sort of lonesome melody, while the second has a gloomy keyboard, but both add to the mood of the album.  The darkest yet possibly loveliest number is The Ocean's Nerves.  Introduced by a shuffling beat akin to a death march, a guitar picks out a gently descending melody on what is the most conventional sounding track here.  Molina doesn't sound bitter, merely resigned singing "I am a red flame hanging low to be close to it, hanging low to be close to you".  The remaining two tracks are the longest at 12 minutes each and not a lot happens throughout.  Not Just A Ghost's Heart drifts by till nine minutes in, the guitars erupt into noise.  Incantation is a fitting title for the final track, on the verge of drifting into nothing for the entire length of the track.  It's undeniably a strange album, but a highly addictive one.

Songs: Ohia - The Lioness

For Jason Molina's fourth album as Songs: Ohia, The Lioness, he decamped to Scotland and recorded with Alasdair Roberts and David Gow and Aidan Moffat from Arab Strap.  The results were released in 2000, and from the opening chords of The Black Crow it's clear things his outlook has darkened a little.  Molina sings a long, bleak tale of dead crows and getting weaker over simple, descending chords. The track builds gradually, developing into a pounding rhythm towards the end.  Tigress shows that he can still do slinky, and this one harks back to previous albums like Impala or Axxess & Ace.  The sound of the album is pretty consistent throughout, tracks like Nervous Bride, Coxcomb Red and the title track work as a song cycle, rather than a bunch of songs just bundled together.  Being In Love sounds like it's using one of Arab Strap's drum machines as Molina sings "being in love means you are completely broken".  Later, Back On Top and Baby Take A Look are two of the sparser, slower moments here, with echoes of Smog thoughout both.

Definitely stronger than its predecessors, The Lioness shows a major leap forward Jason Molina, setting him up for future, fuller albums.

Songs: Ohia - Axxess & Ace

Album number three from Jason Molina was released in 1999.  It opens with the playful, prancing Hot Black Silk, one of a pair of upbeat tracks on this album, the other being Captain Badass.  Trouble is, they don't really suit Molina.  The slower build of Love & Work and Love Leaves Its Abuser are more comfortable for him.  The miserable, molasses-paced Redhead and final track Goodnight Lover have their charm, especially if you like early Smog, as do the countrified fiddle and strum of Come Back To Your Man and Champion.  It's an odd enough album, not a bad one, but kind of... odd.

Songs: Ohia - Impala

Impala is Jason Molina's second album as Songs: Ohia.  Released in 1998, it starts out with its bleakest, slowest moment.  An Ace Unable To Change is an account of a long dark night, Molina singing an account of "gambling with my sentiment" where "tonight I am down to my soul" over seven fairly downbeat minutes where a guitar strums glacially over a chilling organ part, and er, that's about it really.  So obviously it's really good.  After this, however, the pace picks up.  Easts Heart Divided is relatively pacy thanks to the addition of Geof Comings' drums, while This Time Anything Finite At All is almost funky.  Elsewhere it's very much Molina at his most rudimentary.  So we get the manic, one and a quarter minute strum of One of Those Uncertain Hands and the Will Oldham-sounding The Rules of Absence and Just What Can Last.  Songs like A Humble Cause Again only briefly spark into life before being abruptly ended.  Later, there's a dark, sparse beauty to Program: The Mask and Separations: Reminder.

Hard work?  Perhaps.  But a dense and mysterious album.

EP Review: Songs: Ohia - Hecla & Griper

This brief EP, released in 1997, opens with the brisk one and a quarter minute strum Pass, which kind of stops before it gets going.  The material here is oblique, not easily penetrated.  Defenders is the most funereal, slow-paced tune imaginable, Jason Molina wailing intermittently over the sparse chords.  The dusky, strutting Declarer evokes early Smog, and is one of the better tracks here.  The sparse nature of the material allows subtle musical touches, such as the piano part at the end of Easts Last Heart, to stand out.  Penultimate track Advice to Aces, is a fine downbeat strum, almost harking back to early Cure as Molina muses "winter is over...", before it ends abruptly.  He finishes with a very country Conway Twitty cover of Darling.

Probably not the ideal place to start with Molina.

Album Review: Songs: Ohia

Songs: Ohia was the brainchild of the late Jason Molina.  He released a debut album in 1997.  Known to some as "the black album", it consists mainly of a bunch of downbeat strums over which Molina yelps morosely.  Kind of like Neil Young on downers, it's mostly Molina and his guitar with the odd embellishment, such as the slight banjo on opening track Cabwaylingo which lifts this album out of the morass it occasionally threatens to sink into.  Crab Orchard is like Neil Young's Cortez the Killer stripped back completely and slowed to a crawl.

The wintry, backwoods feel of Gauley Bridge and Tenskwatawa brings to mind kinsmen such as Bonnie Prince Billy and early Smog and many of these tracks are quite brief, around the two minute mark.  The brooding Blue Jay introduces an uncredited wind instrument which may be a saxophone, played tastefully, while Our Republic has the stripped back sound Smog were perfecting on Red Apple Falls, with more added saxophone.  

It sure is a one-paced, repetitive album, difficult to get to know but it has a charm that's hard to define.  When you listen to it first it seems like there's not much there, but then you find yourself listening again... and again...