“When you are up to your neck in shit,” wrote Samuel Beckett, “all you can do is sing.” This is as good a starting point as any to discuss the sad fate of Songs: Ohia’s Jason Molina, who sang and sang but ultimately drowned, not in shit but in alcohol, the complications of which took him away from us at the indecent age of 39. This is no easy feat for any drinker, no matter how hard he hits the sauce. Being a drunk myself, I know. And being a drunk, I feel for the guy. He had genius, but he also had a disease, and in the end the disease won.
That said, Molina left behind a rich legacy of wonderful songs, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude. I myself am partial to 2003’s The Magnolia Electric Co., Songs: Ohia’s seventh and final regular album. It’s a haunting and desolately lovely LP, and imbued with a lonely aura of fatality that the albums’ other voices (Scout Niblett, Lawrence Peters) fail to dissipate.
Molina’s work has been compared to that of Palace/Will Oldham, but I also hear distinctive echoes of Smog’s Bill Callahan and Neil Young. But his vocals and lyrics are darker, more beautifully poetic, more doom laden. Neil Young never came close, except on Tonight’s the Night. I can’t listen to Molina without thinking of Rick Danko of the Band singing, “I’ve got fire water right on my breath/And the doctor warned me I might catch a death/Said, “You can make it in your disguise/Just never show the fear that’s in your eyes.”
The Neil Young-esque opening track “Farewell Transmission” delivers on its title—Molina serves up haunting image on top of haunting image, sings, “The real truth about it is there ain’t no end to the desert I’ll cross/I’ve really known that all along.” Sings, “Mama here comes moonlight with the dead moon in its jaws/Must be the big star about to fall.” And then closes the song by repeating variations on, “Long dark blues/A farewell transmission/Listen!” And “Farewell Transmission” is followed by the equally dark “I’ve Been Riding With the Ghost,” which features some appropriately ghostly backing vocals and kicks into gear like that long black Cadillac bearing the ghost of Hank Williams to the gig he would never play in Canton, Ohio on New Year’s Day 1953.
Molina is definitely channeling Neil Young on the bleak but propulsive “Almost Was Good Enough,” on which he sings, “Did you really believe/That everyone makes it out?” before repeating, “Almost no one makes it out” over and over. That is some dark stuff, for sure, and it gives me the shivers just to listen to it. That said, I’ve never been much of a fan of “Old Black Hen,” on which Lawrence Peters sings lead, nor am I overly enamored of “Peoria Lunch Box Blues,” on which Scout Niblett takes a star turn. No, it’s Molina’s voice that I want to hear, carrying its burden of pain like a freight train 46 cars long.
But I totally adore the big guitar sound of “John Henry Split My Heart,” and Molina’s remarkable voice and lyrics. “I stood on the 66 Highway,” he repeats at the song’s beginning, and then proceeds to put everything he has into the goddamn song. He sings, “John Henry split this heart/Split this full moon heart,” then follows that up with the great lines, “Swing the heaviest hammer you’ve got/Hit this full moon out of the park.” The guitar soars, the song’s big bottom tells you everything you need to know about Molina’s origins as a heavy metal fan, and this one surely does what Molina bids it to do, namely hit the full moon right out of the ballpark and into your worst nightmares.
I also adore the slow but lovely “Hold on Magnolia” for the way Molina bears his heart to the world, and for the transcendent violin, lap steel, and piano work, but I love it most for the way it builds and builds to a euphoria-inducing crescendo, leaving you sad but in a good way—in a way that reminds you that you’re alive and to be alive hurts, and all we have to hang onto are tiny epiphanies, such as this mournful but utterly beautiful song.
The weight of the world is too much for some of us to bear. To quote Samuel Beckett again, “You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.” That’s why I drank, and to this day I don’t know why I stopped, or why Jason Molina wasn’t able to do the same. Luck of the draw, I guess.
But it’s a mistake to focus on Molina’s tragic death. It’s his life that matters, and the way he was able to send transmissions, final and otherwise, to the rest of us about how hard it can be just to live. Demons, or more accurately the disease of alcoholism, took Jason Molina away from us far too soon. But he left behind a whole bunch of great songs. “I remember when it didn’t used to be so hard,” he sings on “Almost Was Good Enough.” That, unfortunately, is the final transmission of far too many of us. “Listen!” he bids us, and we do. We listen, and it’s like listening to a ghost.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
