Songs: Ohia
Magnolia Electric Co.
Secretely Canadian SC76
by Marianne Ebertowski
 "Someone used
to say to me: if the only two words you ever say are thank
you then that will be enough," Jason Molina explains
in his liner notes and then says as much to the friends who helped
him make this album. "Thank you" are usually the only
two words Molina ever says on stage and a lot of folks seem to
take offense to what is often called his "uncommunicativeness."
The phrase has always been more than enough for me, though, because
Molina's music makes talking obsolete. Whatever it is he wants
to communicate, it's right there in his quavering, down to earth
lonesome voice, his poignant lyrics and the heartfelt intensity
of his music.
Magnolia Electric Co. is Songs: Ohia's seventh album
and the first one which is more of a real band effort than just
Molina trying to get across whatever is on his mind without or
perhaps with the support of fellow musicians. Produced by veteran
Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio Studio in Chicago, the disc
features the band members who made up Songs: Ohia on the live
album Mi Sei Apparso Come Un Fantasma along with several
guest musicians (among them Mike Brenner on lapsteel) and vocalists
(Jennie Benford of Jim&Jennie & the Pinetops, Lawrence
Peters and Scout Niblett).
The opening song "Farewell Transmission" is one
"long dark blues," seven minutes and twenty-two seconds
worth of angst and apocalypse, sheer nightmarish terror wrapped
in weeping steel and slide, frenzied rock guitar and hypnotic
drumming.
"The whole place is dark/ every light on this side of
the town/ suddenly it all went down," Molina's voice comes
in like a reporter's watching the Twin Towers collapse, but he
makes clear that he doesn't want to be taken hostage by whatever
is happening.
After tonight
if you don't want this to be
I will resurrect it
I'll have a good go at it
I will try
I will really try
I'll be gone but not forever.
The real truth about it is, no one ever really
tried
we're all suposed to try
we will be gone but not forever.
The moment to go is sooner than you may think. "Mama
here comes midnight, with the dead moon in its jaws. Must be
the big star about to fall." "Listen!"
Molina demands several times, no longer the shy introspective
poet we used to know, but a scared prophet trying to wake up
his audience.
"This is not a good time and everybody knows it,"
Jason Molina writes in his linernotes. "I ... made myself
work harder because I want to do something. Anything
I have to say isn't important specifically. I am mostly in these
songs saying things I already felt before it got so much darker."
Doing something is central in "I've Been Riding
With The Ghost," a hard-rocking piece with Jennie Benford
on ghostly background vocals. "Something's got to change,"
an angry Molina decides, aware of the fact, however, that change
does not necessarily mean a change for the better, at least not
right away.
See, I ain't getting better
I'm only getting behind
Standing on the crossroad
trying to make up my mind
trying to remember how it got so late
why every night pain
comes fom a different place
now something's got to change..
"Just Be Simple" starts with a fragile, melancholy
interplay between steel and piano leading up to Molina crooning
his way almost Brian Ferry-style through another song of change
in which he confesses that "now there is really no difference
in who he was once/ And who he's become, " but "I ain't
looking for that easy way out/.../just try and try and try to
be simple again/ just be simple again." The simple harmonies
are, again, provided by Jennie Benford.
On a thick carpet layer of fuzzy guitars and keyboard, Molina
keeps walking through his next song, "Almost Is Good Enough."
"It's been hard doing anything/ winter's stuck around so
long," he observes and the somberly concludes that "almost
no one makes it out." But, then again: "almost was
good enough."
As if his own pensiveness is getting to much of a burden,
Molina passes the mic on to two other singers for the next couple
of songs. First it's Lawrence Peter's turn in "The Old Black
Hen" whose hardcore country delivery of this "bad luck
lullaby" seems oddly out of place on this album. It gets
even odder with "Peoria Lunch Box Blues" where Scout
Niblett's voice floats into the studio as if belonging to a ghost
that has escaped from a cursed castle's closet. There is a certain
spooky quality to Niblett's rather off-key, off-beat singing,
but in the end it is a bit of a relief when she crawls back into
the woodwork and hands the mic over to the maestro himself.
In the meantime, behind the curtains, Molina has gathered
all his courage to come back with a rocking fury. On "John
Henry Split My Heart" which lyrically and musically quotes
form opening song "Farewell Transmission," he proclaims
over thrashing guitars that he will use one half of his split
heart " to pay this band/ half save it, because I'm going
to owe them." A curious declaration of love to a bunch of
musicians he has made a new musical start with into so far unexplored
territory? It certainly sounds like it.
On the album's closing song, "Hold On Magnolia,"
an almost eight minute odyssey of a steel- and fiddle drenched
ballad, Molina takes the audience by the hand and gently leads
it deep into this new territory.
Hold on magnolia
to that great highway
no one has to be that strong
but if you're stubborn like me
I know what you're trying, babe
hold on Magnolia
I hear that lonesome whistle whine
hold on Magnolia
I think it's almost time
Here he lets go of our hand. Like him, we have to "work
it out with our own devils" in times that are not good.
Working harder and doing something may help a bit. With
the magnificently claustrophobic The Magnolia Co. Molina
delivers the sort of album where a reviewer could restrict
himself to just say "thank you." That would be good
enough.
www.songsohia.com
www.secretlycanadian.com
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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