Album Review: Magnolia Electric Co - 10th Anniversary Reissue
I will be gone…but not
forever
Hearing those words now, in “Farewell Transmission,” are
heartbreaking. I mean, they were already heartbreaking to hear, but in the wake
of Jason Molina’s passing earlier this year, all of the references to his own mortality
are amplified throughout his canon.
The only concern that I have over the breathtaking Magnolia Electric Co reissue is that
it’s a cash grab. Aren’t all reissues that, though? If you bought the album 10
years ago, are you going to buy it again so you get some cool, extra shit with
it?
Well maybe. If you’re a completest, like myself.
It would be slightly worse if this were a cash grab aimed
directly at the wallets of those still mourning over Molina’s death. If this
had been planned out prior to his death, then that’s great, and I’m really
happy that it’s getting such a gorgeous reissue package. If not, and if it was
fast tracked so that it would be ready six months after he died, just in time
for the holiday gift giving season…well…
I don’t know what Secretly Canadian’s intentions were with
this reissue project and I guess really, deep down, I don’t care. I didn’t even
bat an eyelash while dropping the $40 for the deluxe reissue of Molina’s
seminal Magnolia Electric Co—a 2xLP,
2xLP, a 10” single, and t-shirt.
Long out of print on vinyl (and apparently hard to find on
c.d. at this point too,) this kind of reissue is overdue, and it is welcome. Magnolia Electric Co’s lonely twang is
the kind of record that needs to be played on a turntable. And that 2nd
LP? It’s an incredibly rare collection of demo recordings of these
songs—stripped down to their core with just Molina and a guitar. And Jesus
Christ. They are devastating.
I was extraordinarily late to the party when it came to
Jason Molina, Songs: Ohia , and the Magnolia Electric Co. He was an artist I
had been aware of for a while (almost a decade actually), but I had never given
him a chance until the fall of 2012—and even though that wasn’t very long ago,
I don’t even remember why I suddenly felt this need to immerse myself in his
music. It was from an incredibly low and dark place that I arrived to his
music—the two albums he released under his own name, Pyramid Electric Co and Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go, are desolate, solemn affairs, and then 2002’s also
seminal (and in need of a reissue) Didn’t
it Rain?
Magnolia Electric
is an interesting, career shifting record—it turns up the twang that Molina
always had, and it turns down a little of the “indie rock” leanings of his
efforts put out under the Songs: Ohia name. The sticker on the front of this
reissue claims that this is the “final” Songs: Ohia album, while Molina himself
said that Didn’t it Rain? was, in
fact, the final Songs release.
It’ll get so quiet when
this record ends…
Like many reissues, the remastering on the album just makes
things slightly louder than the original pressing—but things do sound
incredibly crisp, raw, and full. The percussion is ridiculously sharp—every
cymbal hit, every snare drum.
The real reason that this reissue is essential is the demo
tracks on the second LP, as well as the 10” single including the non-album
tracks “Whip Poor Will,” and the haunting, beautiful, and epic “The Big Game is
Every Night.” The demo tracks, recorded presumably on a four-track recorder,
show just how well thought out these songs were in their early stages.
The mythology surrounding Magnolia Electric is that the band went into the studio with
engineer/polarizing Internet figure Steve Albini, and recorded the songs with
little to no rehearsing prior to that. Perhaps that explains why they sound so
fresh—even ten years after the fact. They capture a moment in time that could
never happen the exact same way again.
Losing Jason Molina this year was a devastating blow. Suffering
from what could only be called a crippling depression, and long a functioning
alcoholic, he spent a better part of the last four or five years living in
various locations, trying to get healthy again. There are so many lyrics that
he’s written that just stay with you; so many songs that I saw so much of
myself in. The “twang” of Magnolia Electric kind of kept me at an
arms length when I first started listening to it last fall, but I understood
how important of a record it was. On the day that I chose to announce the end
of the daily radio show I used to host, I played “Farewell Transmission” as the
second song of the show, coming right after “Silence” by The Autumn Defense.
The way Molina says, “listen,” at the end of “Farewell
Transmission,” still gives me chills. And the way he mutters it more than once
on the demo recording seems like such a personal moment, we shouldn’t even be
allowed to listen to it.
It’s been hinted that Molina was working on music even while
he was rehabilitating himself—that there are unheard recordings somewhere.
Would releasing those in the future be just another cash grab, or would it be a
service to do to the world that needs to hear what he had to say?
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