Jason Molina grew up in a trailer in the working-class city of Lorain, Ohio. The city’s skyline once flickered with blue flames and a warm orange glow emanated from clattering steel mills, but by Molina’s teenage years, Lorain was in a tailspin. It’s a place where the American dream was born and died.
And we watched it die.” Molina did indeed get out: the singer-songwriter released almost 20 studio albums and numerous EPs, primarily under the monikers Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co, spanning lo-fi to slowcore via polished Americana and alt-country. By 2009, he estimated he had written thousands of songs. But he died in 2013, aged 39, after years of alcoholism.
The documentary is a warm and intimate look back on Molina’s early life and how his rust belt upbringing, along with notions of home, place and landscape, became recurring themes in his bountiful songs. The audience for them has kept growing after his death: there’s been a biography, cover albums, a touring tribute band titled Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co made up of ex-bandmates, and he’s got a new generation of fans in Phoebe Bridgers, MJ Lenderman, Clairo, Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee and hyped young singer-songwriters such as Greg Freeman. When Songs: Ohia started in the mid-1990s, it was via lo-fi skeletal songs recorded to tape that were tender yet raw and delivered with a quivering high tenor reminiscent of Neil Young and soon-to-be collaborator Will Oldham.
As grunge and alt-rock boomed, Molina went against the grain. A voracious reader as a child, he consumed everything from instruction manuals to foreign language poetry. His teenage years were spent as a metalhead and by the time he was at college, his fervent, enthusiastic – sometimes annoying – energy earned him the nickname “sparky”.
Now writing a song a day, he would sometimes play impromptu 5am shows on a roof or porch to show them off. Most people are lucky if they have six sides.” Chris Swanson, co-founder of record label Secretly Canadian, heard Molina’s first single, Nor Cease Thou Never Now, and was besotted. Songs: Ohia was the label’s second ever signing and a lifelong relationship began.
A pattern of releasing at least an album a year followed, including 2000’s The Lioness, in which he decamped to Scotland to work with Alasdair Roberts and members of Arab Strap on a ghostly yet beautiful record of post-rock-folk-blues. Emma Niblett, who performs as Scout Niblett, was a friend, collaborator and touring partner of Molina’s. You never quite knew if his stories were true or fantasy or a bit of both.” The late producer Steve Albini, who worked with Molina, also recalled this blurring of truths.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
