For your consideration: Songs:Ohia "Magnolia Electric Company"

This is one of those albums that doesn't get much press in the mainstream music rags, but the indie world has known about Songs:Ohia for years, and they went bombastic over this album last year.

Let's get this straight from the start: Songs:Ohia is actually a guy named Jason Molina. For each album, he plays with whomever is around at the time. The "band" has officially changed it's name to the name of their last album, "The Magnolia Electric Company." To add confusion to all of this, Molina released an LP last year under his own name, titled "Pyramid Electric Company." A bad move, if you ask me, but he didn't and I'm sure he has his reasons for this type of thing. I'll just refer to them as Songs:Ohia because everybody else does.

Anyway...

Jason Molina's early work is really sparse, lyrically obtuse and often minimally recorded. Despite all that, he developed a huge following, especially in Europe. Over the last few years, he has really worked on his song craft, drawing influences from legends like Hank Williams and Willie Nelson. The result just makes his songs a little easier to grasp, but they still have that enigmatic quality that drew so many people to him.

Magnolia Electric Company was recorded by Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio in Chicago (Studio B, to be exact). It's all analog there, and you can tell. The record sounds nothing like Albini's early-90s recordings (Nirvana, PJ Harvey, etc). Instead, it recalls classic 70s recordings like "Harvest" or even The Band's self-titled record. Albini gets a variety of sounds from both the live and dry rooms in Studio B. Sometimes the drums are dry as a bone, sometimes they fill the space. Sometimes it's the vocals that float through the high ceilings of the studio.

The band rips through some great songs, sounding not unlike Crazy Horse (Jason Molina is Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina's nephew).

The songs might not be for everybody, but it's certainly going to be considered an indie classic of this decade.

Their label, Secretly Canadian, has an MP3 of the opening track, Farewell Transmission, available for free download.

For another review, check out allmusic.com.