Songs: Ohia: Magnolia Electric Co. (2LP, 10th anniversary edition) [SECRETLY CANADIAN]

Why you'll love it

This 10th anniversary 2LP set comes in a tip-on gatefold jacket and adds a full disc of Jason Molina's demos, plus "The Big Game Is Every Night" and "Whip-Poor-Will." Critics praised the album on its first outing and again when this edition arrived in 2013.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 10th anniversary edition
• Tip-on gatefold jacket
• Bonus disc of demos

About the album

Jason Molina told his friends he wanted a 1950s sound: old echo on the vocals, doo-wop backing singers and dirty guitars, all recorded live. He got most of it in three days in the summer of 2002 at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio in Chicago, with a band playing the songs for the first time; "Farewell Transmission" went down in one take after a single run-through of the chords.

That opener is the big one, seven minutes of slow, burning country rock, and "I've Been Riding with the Ghost" and "Hold On Magnolia" are close behind. Molina hands the mic to Chicago country singer Lawrence Peters for "The Old Black Hen" and to Scout Niblett for "Peoria Lunch Box Blues," with Jennie Benford his main harmony voice. Pitchfork called the result red-blooded, full-throated country rock.

Molina named the record after the magnolia trees he kept seeing on the road through the American South, resilient and beautiful, and his next band took the name too. Whether this is the last Songs: Ohia album or the first Magnolia Electric Co. one is still debated; we've settled it by filing it in both places, which is a very Canadian solution for a label with Canadian in its name.

Also at Kops: more Songs: Ohia on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Secretly Canadian (cat# SC300), a reissue of the 2003 album.