Only discovered this last year when we were doing the top 100 of the last 20 years orwhateveritwas - easily my favourite new-old discovery of the last two years.
9 because I havenāt lived with it long enough to know if it will end up as an all-time yet. May well ascend to the pantheon of 10 at some point in the next few years.
Molina could really wrap up an album perfectly. Blue Chicago Moon, Hold On Magnolia & Long Desert Train closed out consecutive albums & all would rank in my all time top ten album closers.
(Edit: not meant as a direct reply)
Pretty sure I watched Magnolia Electric Co at ATP. Never really listened to any of his albums though, gonna give this one a go now
10/10
one of the best albums ever. So beautiful and desolate.
This was the first thing I heard by him and itās still my favourite.
Ive given it an 8 because its not really my kind of genre anymore but it would have been a 10 when I was a teenager.
In fact gonna bump it up to a 9 and listen again on headphones later.
Have a personal connection to this album as it really helped me with my depression in my twenties, used to listen to it a lot on late night walks around town.
Gonna put it on for my walk to sainos
going to listen for the first time later on today!
Thank you so much for starting this thread, I would certainly choose Molina for my HGATR but I donāt know if thereās the traction for it sadly.
Will go onto more detail later but for now just smash the ten.
Heās on the list.
There are no guest lead vocals on DIR. There are lots of backing vocals and instrumentation, but the lead vocals are all Molina.
Itās also definitely more desolate and less triumphant than Magnolia Electric Company. I love that album, but for many different reasons.
I know itās the lead track but this is one of my all-time top ten songs:
That might be the fastest 5 I will ever give. The other two would be Fugazi and Converge
Thatās great to know, thanks Funk man
So youāre saying you want us to roll dice?
Ah I love that track!
Oh. Not my thing.
Enjoy your chat.
Having my first listen to it now. It is nice, but not an immediately gripping album. I can imagine it being a grower though.
One of my biggest musical regrets is not getting into Jason Molina years and years earlier.
I was a regular at Richardās Records in Canterbury when in the early 2000s, usually buying Canadian post rock CDs in elaborate cardboard wallets. The guy who worked there had a copy of āDidnāt it Rainā and was evangelising about it in a High Fidelity kind of way. I half listened to the first track, thought it sounded really boring and too much like āAmericanaā or ācountryā (labels I still struggle with) so I told him ānah, not for meā.
Many many years later I got hugely into Songs Ohia and I always think back to that interaction and cringe. It always comes to mind whenever Iām checking out something new, lifeās way too short to persist with everything musical that doesnāt grab you, but what if Iām giving a knee-jerk ānahā to something that could be massively important in my life?
Spoiler: It will.
Yeah that one is great. Peoria Lunch Box Blues is the closest to a relative weak track on either of these albums IMO, and itās still pretty good.