This will probably be my last post in this particular blog, because I'm moving my blog to Wordpress within the next week. Ripping it up and starting again. So I leave you with a tribute to Jason Molina, an incredible musician who never got his due.
Jason Molina, the songwriter behind Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., passed away on March 16 due to organ failure, caused by years of alcohol abuse. It's a real loss, because I always felt that he was one of the most underrated songwriters of the past 15 years and many of his works were among some of the most resonant music I have ever heard in my life. I was introduced to Songs: Ohia in 2002 or 2003 by my high school journalism teacher, who played Impala in class and I was immediately drawn to how somber it was. The harmonium in "An Ace Unable to Change," mixed with a defeated-sounding acoustic guitar, slow drums, and Molina's broken vocals connected with me from the first second. After school that day, I wanted more, so I downloaded a bunch of Songs: Ohia songs, and would just sit there for hours, transfixed on how beautiful a lot of his songs were.
The album that stood out for me the most was 2000's Ghost Tropic, which is one of the saddest albums I've ever heard. Recorded with members of the Scottish folk group Appendix Out, Molina created a damn near masterpiece of heartbreak, isolation and feelings as tense as anything you have ever experienced. I always envisioned this album as kind of an art-house movie taking place after a really bad fight with your partner, and just going for a late night walk around the darkened streets of your town close to midnight, with color being used sparsely - some of the songs have color in the background, and others are simply black and white, just like the album's sparse cover art. The black is darker than hell and the white is as bright as a blinding flash - I suppose juxtaposing the lightness and the darkness of life itself, especially in the realm of love.
I imagine the first track, "Lightning Risked It All," starting when you're at least a few houses away from your lover's, and at first the walk is steady yet tense and sluggish, capturing the rhythm of the song, with the sound of a guitar string being a symbol for your racing thoughts and your heightening and decreasing of emotions after such a quarrel. The scene is in color, as well as that of "The Body Burned Away," but the colors are not very illuminated and kind of like an old, fading photograph "Body" continues the pace of the first track, but a lot more tense. It's one of those songs that's tense to start but you feel the tension rising in the smallest increments possible.
By the time "No Limits on the Words" starts up, you've wound down a little from your anger, and are alone in a field. The colors fade to black and white. The sad, echoing guitar makes the scene that more stark, and you start thinking about how much you really love someone. Molina's vocals were as shattered as ever, as he repeats the near-mantra of the song, "I will say nothing," and probably the best lyric he ever wrote, "I can tell that my shadow likes you still." From here on out, Ghost Tropic becomes an exercise in trying to contain your emotions as you walk down the quiet roads, seeing houses few and far in between vacant with sleep. The two "Ghost Tropic" instrumentals, and "The Ocean's Nerves" sustain your melancholia, but it doesn't intensify until you get to the 12-minute "Not Just a Ghost's Heart." You're nearing the ocean, contemplating everything, and the scenery is more ominous and empty than Eraserhead, with the opaque entirety of the sky placing a mirror on the ground so you can barely see around you, save for a few streetlights. The same two chords drone on for the song's entire length with a tremolo caked on it like a fast, uneasy heartbeat. "Her curve is the whole coast" - yes, indeed. But here, her curve is your entire world, and the world is what you want back.
This leads to the final track, "Incantation," which is exactly what it is. Well over 11-minutes long, the song finds you now at an abandoned beach, and the tides are shifting. "The sound of our feet against the road/it spreads through the night." Nothing sounds more louder and more isolating as these steps you trudge on the long road from the comfort of your lover to this stark beach - nothing like the beaches in Bermuda. And Molina's constant chant if "work it out with me" shows how much he wants a resolve to a harrowing situation, and as you're alone staring at the increasingly violent waves, you too want to march back to your lover and work it out with her. You both have an eagerness like a little kid in a toy shop and a fear-ridden paralysis that makes you want the waves to swallow you whole. You're not prepared to give in to the undertow, but you're not prepared to fight either. The fading mellotron that closes out the album shows your face with a look of both determination and hopelessness as the screen fades to black.
I've had these images floating in my head since pretty much when I first heard the album some ten years ago. Ghost Tropic is nothing short of a visceral listening experience, and not an easy one either. Depending on what mood you're in, it's either an exercise in catharsis and beauty, or one in trying your patience. It doesn't get the recognition I feel it deserves, like some of his other works do, mainly Didn't It Rain and Axxess and Ace, also both brilliant albums. But, if nothing else, Ghost Tropic not only gave me a cathartic listening experience, but it also gave me an idea for a film too. It might not be a good idea, and I am not well-versed in film-making at all, nor do I have an intense interest in it, but it's something. And for that I have Jason Molina to thank.
Magnolia Electric Co. - "Don't Fade on Me"
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