What Comes After The Blues

After unconventionally releasing a live album, *Trials and Errors* as his new band’s debut, Jason Molina assembled Magnolia Electric Co.’s first studio album. True to his somber nature, Molina centers on a perpetual loneliness that emanates from every instrument, from the shaky, tentative quaver in his voice to the twisted desperation in the strangulated electric guitar leads. The beats often trudge or plod, reminiscent of Neil Young’s noir-ish explorations of *Tonight’s the Night* and *On the Beach*. “Give Something Else Away Every Day” and “Northstar Blues” haunt with stunning austerity. Jennie Benford of Jim and Jennie and the Pinetops adds some sweeter harmonies and even a lead vocal turn for “The Night Shift Lullaby” to slightly soften the mood. Organs, strings, acoustic guitars and assaulting electric guitars create a much grander stage than Molina’s previous recording outfit, Songs: Ohia. Yet, as its album title implies, Molina is interested in exploring where the music goes once it’s moved beyond its initial footing, probing here beyond the mesmerizing two-chord obsessions of his past and delving into a morose doom that can also two-time as near celebratory classic rock.

Jason Molina's first full-band studio effort as Magnolia Electric Co. is caught between roots-rock and ghostly isolation.

Following quickly from the live Trials & Errors is What Comes After the Blues, the studio debut of Jason Molina's Magnolia Electric Co.

If the normal trajectory for an artist's career is to begin by honing the basics and mastering accepted forms and then gradually transcending them through...