From the start, it's tough to ignore how much What Comes After the Blues
the new record from Magnolia Electric Co., sounds like Neil Young. Comparing Jason Molina's band to Young is a tired practice, but this album is the closest to a rip-off Molina has recorded, so avoiding the reference is almost impossible.
That doesn't mean the album is bad -though it cannot touch the quality of the band's 2003 masterpiece Magnolia Electric Co. this new release is entertaining and, at times, enthralling.
What Comes After the Blues is essentially divided into a loud first half and a stripped-down second half, both sides rootsy through and through. Every song on the record features Molina's morose musings (How can I be the only one whose heart refuses to try?), sung by him except on The Night Shift Lullaby when Jennie Benford ably takes the microphone. Weathered, impassioned vocals remain one of the band's strong points.
The Dark Don't Hide It starts things off with crunchy Crazy Horse guitars and the most upbeat tempo on the album. The quartet of songs that makes up the first half is uniformly great, all songs that reveal themselves after five or six listens. Leave the City is perhaps the best song here, featuring a mournful trumpet, twangy guitars and graceful piano under Molina's typically dark lyrics.
The second set of songs rarely strays from an acoustic guitar and the sound of Molina's voice, with pleasant window dressing from violin or pedal steel. On Hammer Down
Molina confides, I saw the light. It precedes the album's closer, the immensely affecting ballad I Can Not Have Seen the Light. Molina and Benford cry out repeatedly, I thought I saw the light
and you have to wonder if there's a more sorrowful fellow out there than Jason Molina.
Magnolia Electric Co. will appear at 10 p.m. tonight at Casa Cantina, 4 W. State St. Admission is $8. Southeast Engine will open.
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Chris Deville
