JASON MOLINA - Pyramid Electric Co.

The first album credited simply to Jason Molina is actually the twin of that "Magnolia Electric Co." which, in 2003, had sealed the definitive (?) abandonment of the Songs:Ohia moniker. Recorded alongside its predecessor, "Pyramid Electric Co." comes out in a seductive vinyl edition (accompanied by the CD, just as Shellac used to do back in the day with Steve Albini), and it announces the full maturity of the boy from Lorain.

A solitary excursion (his only companion being Mike Mogis on production), far removed from the electric energy of its sister album and immersed in the deepest waters of American songwriting. Molina does everything himself, with guitar and piano, pushing a notion of intimacy tied to ultimate desolation to its furthest limits, with no room for any form of comfort. A journey in seven stages, in which not even the faintest glimmer of light can be glimpsed, trapped in a suffocating attic under the unyielding rule of absolute darkness.

Echoes of Oldham at his best are always present, but this may well be the moment where Jason manages to approach the master with the greatest awareness. The communicative urgency is fully expressed through an anesthetizing folk, dense with bluesy bitterness and devoid of any sonically seductive masks: a stripped-bare man presents himself to the world, defeated and powerless, at the mercy of the unfolding of events.

A dry, compact record, sincere and solid, even in the inevitable shortcomings of an artist of uneven quality, yet coherent and genuine in what it sets out to do. In all likelihood the best work of an overrated career, one that today manages to explain itself to us, through a dramatic sincerity, its own reason for being.

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12/12/2006