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?

The 10th anniversary reissue of Magnolia Electric Co is available now via Secretly Canadian. The 2xLP/10" is LIMITED EDITION so you should probs order sooner, rather than later.


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