MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO. – fading trails

(CD/LP, secretly canadian)

I dreamed up an interview with Jason Molina, leader and frontman of Magnolia Electric Co. We were sitting in a small café come pub in the sixth district of Vienna, long hours before he would play a cheered up live show at the Szene (www.szene.at). His bandmates were hanging around the billiard table in the back of the café, some of the usual people were hanging out or holding on to their early afternoon beers, while Jason Molina tried to keep a steady face to my answers. After laying out how he likes to sit in the back of tourbus late at night when everyone else is asleep and writing and sometimes even recording the songs for his still current solo albums there (the last “let it go” is recommended, also on Secretly canadian) I started on him.

Cracked: You are touring a lot. The record has been recorded all over the place with a variety of people. Now roaming the world, meeting people but never getting to know them for real, because you have to leave so soon, the real wanderer’s life is something that has to really suit you. I know, because it is something that I am really afraid of. The problem of how to keep the connections, where to find the points that link you to your life, not only economically but more important emotionally and psychologically. It can tear you up, really break you in half. A person needs a lot of strength to be able to wander the world, but also a lot of sensibility to still be able to discover and enjoy its beauties and wonders. But that is just part of the dialectic that is so dangerous if you overestimate your power to take a life like this, because at times it can be like a straight hit to the chin. When you find yourself on the road after hours and wonder where exactly you are but you don’t want to ask around because everybody has got those looks. And this distraction or rather this frail feeling of being torn up is right there in all the bitterness and sweetness of your songs, I hear it right down to the mellow yet sharp sound of your guitar soloing and the harmonic lines, whose uniqueness comes from a singular approach to minor / major chord changes.

Molina: Uhm, ah. Possibly.

Cracked: A lot of times reviewers compare your music to Neil Young, especially the band formation of Magnolia Electric Company and the legendary “Harvest”-album. Reviewers are lazy asses, even if Harvest is still one of the best albums about. Me, I feel a deep connection to Neil Diamond in your music, thinking that instead of you covering a Neil Diamond song – which was my first idea – I think that Neil Diamond really should cover one of your songs. I am thinking of either “Don’t fade on me” or “Talk to me devil, again”, would be great. I hear the big arrangements and orchestra size of those songs even within the regular band plus hammond arrangement on your album. “Fading Time” is leaning more towards the less grand size in comparison to “What comes after the blues”, but still not as rocking or amplified as “Hard to love a man” or the first album. There are even purely acoustic songs on there, especially the almost avantgarde piano and crackles only “The old horizon”. Anyway, I think that Neil Diamond would be the first and forward choice as Johnny Cash after all was with Will Oldham.

Molina: Ahw, in a way.

Cracked: Uniqueness and originality don’t often combine with steadiness and vision, but if it does usually something great arises. Often it is killed by economy or stubbornnesss or even not buying into it anymore. On the other hand, the guitar is still the musical instrument sold the most often around the world, no matter what Pro Tools and computers do to music. Some say it is because you can bend notes on a guitar, which you don’t usually do on any other instrument. Other say it is because it can step in for a full orchestra, you can sing to it and you can carry it everywhere. So it is the ubiquitous full instrument that focuses attention on the singer and to itself, in opposition to instruments you can carry but who focus fully on the instruments because they either keep you from singing, like the harp or the violin, or aren’t really inviting musically such as the tambourine and other percussion things. Which fits the notion of travelling. Then playing guitar is still one of the sexiest and most erotic ways of playing and instrument this side of a nude woman playing the cello. Of course, that is connected to the way you can bend notes, you grip the neck of the guitar, you stand up and press you pelvis against the body of a guitar, it is a very erotic thing to do. Within your songs and all of their melancholy and world weariness, their wisdom of the workings of love and the puzzlement that still lingers around the issue of love and relationships, does eroticism still play into the mixture?

Molina: Guess so. Hey, that was a real question.