Vinyl Diaries VII: Magnolia Electric Co

photo by slowmotionlandscape

Magnolia Electric Co
Annandale Hotel
August 8

What comes after the blues?

On Jason Molina's lips, it's a funny question, but, it seems, also deadly serious.

Those who came to Molina in his Songs: Ohia guise may be a little unsure what to make of Magnolia Electric Co. On one hand it paints from a very similar palette - a Midwestern prairie mythology rich in primal, near-mystical motifs. There is still no shortage of wolves (who are never just wolves), moons both crescent and full, the devil, serpents, freight yards, lonely highways and dusty roads. There is still plenty of the ever-present blue - the blues, blue moons, the blues, blue lights, the blues, blue eyes, the blues, blue skies - and the blues.

But where Songs: Ohia belonged out there, under the starry sky, travelling dusty back roads, even roaming with the coyotes, Magnolia Electric Co brings it on home - the nomadic troubadour returning with tales tall and true, collected from far and wide and brought back to a wide-eyed listener.

Yet they remain intensely personal stories - not so much exploits or even impressions, but feelings made flesh. We don't know what the experience really was, but we're left with no uncertainty about how Molina felt.

The recurrent imagery makes this no less effective, because he climbs into it so well and through repetition reshapes it as his own, beats it like a blacksmith into something we can all recognise. His shape-shifting women (lion women, tiger women, wolf women) may seem on first glance to walk a fine line towards misogyny, but in the context of his eternal bafflement you realise he's not painting them as merely ruthless predators bent on cruelty; there's always an abiding respect.

As they sink their teeth into his warm, bleeding heart, he's offering himself up, submitting to his perplexed notion of love. He wants to be consumed because he doesn't know how to give anything less than his all.

The heart is a frequent topic - invariably broken. But it's not just Molina's heart in question, it's also our own.

Music is one of the most physical of arts, but the body will experience it in many different ways. There's music for the feet, to make us move. there's music for the mind, to make our neurons bump and fizz. Then there's this - music for the chest, the stomach, the heart. It's music you feel through the body, the organs, direct emotional impulses that cut through thought and go straight to the heart of us all.

It's here that Molina sets up a space that separates him from a Smog/Bill Callahan and his dry ironic detachment, but draws him closer to Will Oldham or Catpower, despite mining quite different musical veins.

While there has been a subtle lyrical shift that suggests that these days he is a little less lost, a little less overwhelmed by the spiritual dimension of existence, the biggest shift that gives this away is musical.

When Molina plays solo - either formerly as Songs: Ohia or occasionally still under his own name, less is almost always more. A cavernous sound is created by a few intriguingly open chords, the spaces within giving us enough breathing room to better experience, as it closes in, the suffocation that follows. We drift through these spaces, hang on the unspoken.

While the words are near obsessed with movement and displacement through landscapes, musically motion is never key - we enter a space, inhabit it.

Magnolia Electric Co, on the other hand, fills these spaces. The itinerant boxcar travellers move the narrative through space and time, kicking, at times, into a bar-room stomp. The two guitars, capo-constricted, dance mostly in time though have the occasional falling out. The Hammond keyboard does a lot of the driving, whereas the drums remain fairly loose, playing stumbling witness to the unfolding drama. There is no bass at all tonight bar for the last three songs, where it makes a late appearance taking over from the Hammond in pulling the whole show along.

This rollicking, jamming approach brings Molina a lot closer to that touchstone that has always lurked just beyond the periphery, the ghost of Neil Young (one of those who can have ghosts before they die). And though his brow is still furrowed, that thick bushy eyebrow drawing down over his troubled eyes, one can't help realising that he enjoys this moment of catharsis. Molina tours near ceaselessly, perhaps restlessly, but as though there's really no other option for his survival. He lives to play, and the companionship on stage seems almost vital to his wellbeing. When here a few months ago playing by himself, he promised to bring the band back and we knew he truly meant it. What we didn't realise was just how much they mean to him - even though we could manage without them just fine.

We may pine for the Songs:Ohia days of the tortured soul, the lost, battered, broken body, but it would be a tad churlish to begrudge Molina his shard of light, to wish him ill for our vicarious musical edification. Tempting as it is.

So what does come after the blues? Well it's more blues, but with a glint in its eye. The wolf-headed conjurer in the cross roads is not pure malevolence after all. We can pick a direction, walk the road, and if we don't find what we're seeking, there may still just be a second chance.