Description

With the wailing lap steel of the album opener Farewell Transmission, Jason Molina & Company usher in a new day, playing the sort of rock that your cool uncle rolled to back in the 70s. Landing somewhere on the radar sonically between Bob Dylan s Desire and Bob Seger s Beautiful Loser, though thematically in-line with Lynyrd Skynard s Simple Man, The Magnolia Electric Co lies at the crossroads of working class rock, white soul, swamp rock and outlaw country. Boasting a doo wop-like line-up with five vocalists on the floor, featuring Jennie Benford (of Jim & Jennie & the Pinetops, who was also a key player on Didn t It Rain) and Scout Niblett alongside Jason Molina.

Recorded live, in its entirety, at the hands of Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio Studio in Chicago, Illinois, with the same core back-up band that played on the Mi Sei Apparaso Come Un Fantasma Italian live album, this is the record where the Songs: Ohia fan demographics make a radical shift from the dominant bedroom universe of the world s lonely, sensitive, overqualified young white dudes, and finds refuge in the masses by being embraced by the world s truck drivers, sorority chicks, and hockey players, alike. Indeed, this is the first Songs: Ohia record with more than one song that could be played at a strip joint or monster truck show. Amid the mid-tempo slow jams, there lie some of the most upbeat material that Songs: Ohia has recorded to date.

CD from Secretly Canadian.