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.

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.