Josephine finds Jason Molina bound by regret and fits of
restless isolation, staring down his ghosts while forging a path of
escape through deep shadows and the faraway horizon.
The latest album from Magnolia Electric Co. is a somber and deeply
evocative work, drenched in images of open sky, sunsets and the tragedy
of those left behind.
Molina’s greatest gift as a songwriter is to create lyrics that
align perfectly—song by song—with the emotional core of his
band’s sound. From the soft piano that opens “O! Grace” to the twangy
Dobro on “Whip-Poor-Will” to the flighty organ of “Little Sad Eyes,”
the songs sound like a solemn march across the high plains, and when
the lyrics have a nightbird calling, you can just about hear it.
Explicitly in “Hope Dies Last” and more subtly in “Shenandoah,”
Molina sings of failure and an end-of-the-rope longing. It’s a
loneliness to match the pale high moon, and one that “only the
strongest hearts” can outlast. “The only bridge I haven’t burned is the
one I’m standing on,” Molina sings in “Shiloh,” a road song in which
the burning ghost weeps for nothing—and for everything.
The name Josephine pops up in two songs besides the title track, and
each time, it’s an opaque invocation, never revealing if Josephine is
the hope or the tragedy, the regret or the mercy, the ghost or the
living. And in that, Molina has made his cry a universal one.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.
