4 December 2008 :: werewolves and zombies are way more interesting

:: Record Review

Magnolia Electric Co.

Sojourner Box
(Secretly Canadian; 2007)

Rating: 68%

On September 1st, 1996, the Indiana-based record label Secretly Canadian released their first two pieces of music: June Panic's Glory Hole and Songs: Ohia's second 7'' single, One Pronunciation of Glory (the band's first 7'', Nor Cease Thou Never Now, was released earlier in '96 by Will Oldham's Palace Records). Those two records are, respectively, SC001 and SC002. Seven months later Secretly Canadian put out Songs: Ohia's self-titled debut full-length (SC004). Since then, Jason Molina, the sole continuous member of Songs: Ohia has, either under that name, his own, or as Magnolia Electric Co., released 13 more full-length records, two EPs, and a few singles on the label. He released the terrific live album Mi Sei Apparso Come Un Fantasma in 2001 on Paper Cup, his Amalmagated Sons of Rest project with Oldham and Alasdair Roberts was signed to Galaxia, and he has put out singles elsewhere, but for the last decade, Secretly Canadian and Molina have maintained one of the most fruitful, long-lived, and supportive relationships in modern indie-rock.

And now, nearly eleven years after One Pronunciation, comes Sojourner (SC150, if you're keeping track), a four-CD/one-DVD box set that comes packaged with five postcards, a poster, and, yes, a pewter medallion. It is, in short, a wooden crate full of Molina's varied detritus, both the beautiful and the absurd. As with so many things that bear Molina's stamp of approval, it is both maddeningly frustrating and remarkably good. It can be read as either a gift to the fans and a rare glimpse into Molina's process or an exploitative scheme to make some cash and milk the failure of Fading Trails (2006).

One way or the other it's a ridiculous collection. No doubt the scale of the thing and the price -- relatively low given the sheer number of songs, but more than your average release -- will keep this one within the purview of the serious fans. The idea of it -- a sort of completist's wet dream -- is pretty simple: the four CDs that make up Sojourner are culled from four different recording sessions done with varying line-ups and in different locations between 2005 and 2006. Molina already took the step of releasing Fading Trails, a distillation of the four discs, last year (all the songs from that record appear in exactly the same form over these four discs). If nothing else, Sojourner certainly makes one wonder how exactly Molina managed to take the 33 songs spread over these four sessions and select the nine that appeared on that album. He managed to choose some of the best, but also left off quite a few clear winners. Considering that Fading Trails clocked in at 28 minutes it wasn't like he was pressed for time. That, in fact, may be the most off-putting part of Sojourner: it makes clear how much better Fading Trails could have been and, ultimately, makes that record completely irrelevant.

Or maybe Fading Trails was conceived as a short record taken from multiple recordings and now Molina wants to show us where it came from. The man does have a well-earned reputation for shooting himself in the foot. Either in terms of poorly-conceived collaborations (i.e. "The Old Black Hen" and "Peoria Lunchbox Blues" off Magnolia Electric Co. [2003]), releasing records that leave off some of his best songs (the inexplicably absent "The Big Game is Every Night" from Magnolia Electric Co.; the continuing non-existence of studio versions of most of the songs from Mei Sei Apparso); or releasing great albums in ridiculously limited quantities (The Ghost [1999] and Protection Spells [2000] were both issued in printings of 500), Molina has, for all his prolificacy, managed to keep some of his best material away from public consumption. Maybe this is what happened to "No Moon on the Water" or "Blackbird" or any number of Sojourner tracks. In the last few years he's made up for this tendency in small ways. For instance, the original release of Magnolia Electric Co. on vinyl came packaged with a disc of demos that nearly rivaled the album-proper. Sojourner could just be an expression of this instinct writ large (and in crate form).

Either a gift or a marketing gimmick, Sojourner is unlikely to change many minds about Molina and his Magnolia Electric Co. project. The complaints are pretty familiar: his imagery is both too repetitive and too unimaginative; his musical range -- even given the growth we've seen over the years -- is limited; too much of the oeuvre is almost identical. And indeed, darkness, stars, roads, snakes, and devils all make their appearances; hell, five of the songs have the word "moon" in their titles. Within each of the sessions there's little sonic diversity: both the Sun Session EP and Nashville Moon are full-tilt Muscle Shoals sound; Shohola has the stripped-down, lo-fi feel of Molina's previous solo work; The Black Ram is the most uniform set of the bunch, and the dirge-like pacing does indeed make the songs a bit interchangeable (at least up through the brilliant, if already familiar, "A Little at a Time").

There are plenty of us, however, who don't lend too much credence to the haters, at least when it comes to Molina. These complaints miss the larger vision of Molina's work. In a recent interview with Pitchfork, Molina responded to this sort of criticism, if only half-heartedly, saying, "I never wanted to sing about things I didn't know about, and this is just the way that I interpret day-to-day life. And if people are critical of this sort of snake eating its tail with the lyrics, I have nothing really to say to that, because what I'm offering is something that I believe to be true." Or, as he put it in "The Old Black Hen": "I was trying to sing the blues / the way I find them."

And he does that really, really well. Yes, he comes back to the same themes and images, but so what? I can't think of another musician that has so powerfully and honestly confronted loneliness, depression, space, and, yes, love, and all while using a lexicon and mythology that, while rooted in traditional folk and country music, he has made his own. If it's familiar it's because it has to be familiar; it's familiar because the themes and emotions are familiar. I admire Will Oldham for his ability to confront mortality and sex; I listen to Smog because of Bill Callahan's grasp on fear, anger, lust, and isolation; Kurt Wagner and David Berman mix wry humor and heartbreak in a way that gets me every time. But not one of them can (or at least has) so often and so directly engaged these themes of dislocation and heartbreak the way Molina has, and certainly not in this language of folk music (Oldham probably comes closest).

Thankfully, those who love Molina for these traits should find plenty on Sojourner to like, especially Nashville Moon, far and away the best of the four discs. Recorded by frequent collaborator Steve Albini, Nashville, with its full-bodied sound and decidedly country twang, feels like the natural follow-up to 2005's What Comes After the Blues. The first three tracks here served as the opening trio for Fading Trails as well, albeit in a different order, but they work even better on a disc where they're followed by a set of songs in the same vein. The longer, full-band take on "Hammer Down" is nice, if inessential, but it's the unfamiliar material that's bound to excite. "No Moon on the Water" is all heavy drums and quick guitar stabs, with Molina sounding downright rock 'n roll; "Nashville Moon" brings back that lilting trumpet that the band used so well on What Comes After the Blues's "Leave the City"; we even finally get the song "What Comes After the Blues." The rerecorded, significantly less Crazy Horse-indebted versions of Trials & Errors (2005) standouts "Don't This Look Like the Dark" and "North Star" are a nice touch as well.

The other three discs are not without their charm, though they do pale in comparison to Nashville. The four-song Sun Session EP is almost too brief to register, especially as it contains no new Molina material. The sound quality is certainly impressive -- Sun Studios lives up to its reputation -- but it's not clear why Molina decided to rehash "Hold On Magnolia," easily one of the most beloved songs of his career. This new version is pretty, and a few minutes shorter, but doesn't have anything on the original. Shohola, by contrast, is stark and quiet, with just Molina and a microphone. He's done this before, to great effect, and Shohola, despite several strong tracks, simply can't compete with the harrowing Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go, recorded around the same time, or the monumental and vastly underrated Pyramid Electric Co. (2004).

This leaves The Black Ram, the least exciting of the bunch. Recorded by Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker leader David Lowery, and featuring an entirely different assortment of musicians, the disc feels muddled. Where Albini keeps his hands off and leaves the sound crisp, Lowery lets things vibrate and thicken. It's an approach that Molina has made work before, most clearly on Ghost Tropic (2000), but here, with too much in the mix and not enough room to breathe, it comes of as mostly just lugubrious. The song-writing is strong, and it's all the more frustrating that where they do make it work -- the title track, "Blackbird," the phenomenal "A Little at a Time" -- the results are stunning. As a whole, though, the disc just feels like a missed opportunity; if you've got Andrew Bird recording with you, at least have him do something your normal band couldn't have managed better.

There's a good case to be made for Sojourner being a pretty bad idea. It's an absurd way to package what amounts to, at the end of the day, eighteen new songs (totaling 66 minutes of music), a DVD that you will watch once, and a couple of tchotchkes. As a gift to the fans, which is how Molina has characterized it, it's a pretty iffy choice. If you happened to have bought Fading Trails, as most of the people who would actually drop the cash for Sojourner probably did, this may not seem like such a great deal. Nonetheless, this is undoubtedly the way the songs should be heard, and the set certainly doesn't feel cheap or rushed. Molina has always had a way with single-session albums (Magnolia Electric Co. was, for instance, recorded in three days), and having the context to place the songs that made up Fading Trails makes sense.

After having listened through Sojourner quite a bit now, I'm struck by the feeling that it'd be nice to get some new Molina songs. Since way back in 1997 when he kicked things off properly, Molina hasn't gone a year without releasing a new full-length (or two, or even three, as in 2000). Seeing as all this material is at least a year old, Molina may be on his way to his most unproductive year in memory. Let's hope that, having got this out of his system, Molina's willing to tackle something new. Peter Hepburn :: 10 August 2007 |                

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