Songs: Ohia

Since 1996 · United States

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Magnolia Electric Co. (2003)

Magnolia Electric Co. trades Songs: Ohia's stripped-down isolation for a fuller, classic-rock-indebted band sound without losing Jason Molina's stark, weather-beaten worldview. "Farewell Transmission" stretches past seven minutes on a repeated, mantra-like refrain, "the whole place is dark," that turns simple repetition into genuine dread. The record functions as both an ending and a beginning, closing out one project's name while opening the next. It remains the album most responsible for Molina's lasting reputation as one of the era's most unflinching songwriters about endurance and loss.

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Songs: Ohia

Magnolia Electric Co. · 2003

Jason Molina recorded as Songs: Ohia from 1996 to 2003, building a catalog of stark, reverb-heavy songs steeped in isolation, weather, and endurance, often recorded quickly and with a rotating cast of collaborators. He pushed back directly against frequent comparisons to Leonard Cohen, saying he hadn't actually heard a single Cohen song until he was nearly out of college, a lineage critics assumed rather than one he ever claimed himself.

Magnolia Electric Co., released in 2003, is both the final Songs: Ohia album and the first release credited to the renamed project, marking the exact transition point between the two, a rare instance of one record serving double duty. He continued recording as Magnolia Electric Co. for the rest of the decade before his death in 2013, a loss that only deepened the reputation of his catalog's stark honesty about hardship and mortality.