Out on Frenchkiss Records in 2005, this is an album infused with feel-good rock swagger, a trademark of The Hold Steady who are often tagged as a carefree band concerned only with beer and good times. For me (and many others, I’m not speaking of a revelation here), this misses the point entirely. It seems the kind of view held by people who dream of road trips after reading Kerouac. There is a glory in Finn’s work, but it is a glory intrinsically linked to sadness, a Christian glory consisting of everything from sweet nostalgia to cell-splitting, body-selling depression. The characters are going full-throttle because they are afraid of what will happen should they stop, something that brings to mind David Foster Wallace’s ideas on addiction vs. an existential void: “Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties – all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave.”

‘Hornets! Hornets!’ introduces us to Holly, the Bones Brigade-watching, Kate Bush-miming, Nabokov-referencing woman who goes with whoever’s going to get her the highest. It’s never quite clear exactly where she is or what is happening, a vagueness which continues onto the next track and indeed throughout the whole album. ‘Cattle & the Creeping Things’, packed with Biblical references, has always made me think of AA/NA (especially as Holly mentions going through the program), the collection of dysfunctional characters and hijinks similar to those of Infinite Jest’s Ennet House. Whether Finn intended to portray this scene is unclear (Separation Sunday is that sort of album). ‘Little Hoodrat Friend’ goes on to describe how pain and joy are linked, as in addiction, something symbolised perfectly by talk of tattoos (she’s got blue black ink and it’s scratched into her lower back. It said: Damn right he’ll rise again”). ‘Banging Camp’ tells of her descent into the nitrous-fuelled tent community pitched on the banks of the Mississippi and her refusal to slow down despite the risks:

“Holly wore a cross to ward them off.
She said if they think you’re a Christian then they won’t bring in the dogs.
And if they think you’re a catholic then they’ll wanna meet your boss.
Holly wore a cross to ward them off”

‘Charlemagne In Sweatpants’ introduces the pimp Charlemagne, a figure with whom Holly becomes entangled (“and it’s not like she’s enslaved. It’s more like she’s enthralled”) and it seems likely that Holly is accelerating, increasing elevation to avoid the comedown (“first it makes her feel tall then it makes her feel small and it’s all a sweet fleeting feeling”).

But the second half of the album sees a transformation in Holly. During ‘Stevie Nix’ the first rays of light poke through (“I was half dead. Then I got born again. I got lost in all the lights but it was ok in the end”) and ‘Multitude of Casualties’ sees the beginning of redemption (“she was feeling out the 5:30 folk mass… the night that she got born again”). ‘Don’t Let Me Explode’ is Holly’s plea for rescue (with her calling on Saint Barbara, the patron saint of a number of occupations linked to sudden death) and ‘Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night’, while not mentioning any characters by name, comes across as an advert for The Scene that Holly is leaving behind:

“We mix our own mythologies. We push them out through PA systems.
We dictate our doxologies and try to get sleeping kids to sit up and listen.
I’m not saying we could save you.
But we could put you in a place where you could save yourself.
If you don’t get born again at least you’ll get high as hell”

But Holly is out the other side. Holly saves herself. ‘Crucifixion Cruise’ sees her wake in a confession booth, sick and tired but feeling brave enough to change or at least attempt it:

“She said Lord what do you recommend?
To a real sweet girl who’s made some not sweet friends.
Lord what would you prescribe?
To a real soft girl who’s having real hard times”

The final track, a contender for my favourite, ‘How a Resurrection Really Feels’, tells of Holly crashing from the confession booth into Easter Mass. She stands among the pews in her dishevelled state and says “Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?” The track is a culmination of all that Separation Sunday stands for, regret and joy swirl around the church as Hallelujah confesses her adventures and troubles and finally earns her full name.

There is a section of Don DeLillo’s Underworld (an extract later released as the title story in his collection The Angel Esmeralda) that captures this atmosphere perfectly. Two nuns travel to a run-down area of the Bronx where a crew of graffiti artists paint an angel for every child that dies. The two Sisters are disillusioned by the violence and sadness they see but at the end of the story witness the inexplicable appearance of an image upon a billboard in a busy street. An image of a murdered girl, Esmeralda:

“Her presence was a verifying force, a figure from a universal church… Everything felt near at hand, breaking upon her, sadness and loss and glory and an old mother’s bleak pity and a force at some deep level of lament that made her feel inseparable from the shakers and mourners, the awestruck who stood in tidal traffic.”

Holly is away from home for a long period, a victim of her generation, mourned by her loved ones whether she is dead or otherwise (“they wrote her name in Magic Marks, on stop signs and subway cars, they got a mural up on East 13^th that said Hallelujah rest in peace”). In her absence she’s a saint, in her return an angel, her redemption is full of the sadness, pity and glory. But the redemption is not hers alone. It is fundamentally personal yet communal, shared by all. What has come before happened to everyone and no-one, means everything and nothing. To return to DeLillo: “she was nameless for a moment… a disembodied fact in liquid form, pouring into the crowd.” What has happened has happened but, for that moment at least, Holly is not alone.

This post has rambled on too long already and I’ve barely mentioned the array of references scattered across the album from Nelson Algren to Rod Stewart, Mary Tyler Moore to Jackie Onassis. I’ve not mentioned how Finn references old Hold Steady songs and even older Lifter Puller songs. I’ve not revealed that Holly reappears later in The Hold Steady catalogue. What’s worse, I’ve passed over killer lines that make the whole thing so special (“She drove it like she stole it. She stole it fast and with a multitude of casualties”). The truth is you could do a PhD on this thing. Maybe somebody already has.

The post How a Resurrection Really Feels: Separation Sunday appeared first on Various Small Flames.

So my plan is to write about some of my favourite of Molina’s songs in the hope of inspiring you to delve deeper into his back-catalogue yourself.

Firstly, a quick bit of background info. If you’re not already familiar with his work, you should know that Molina recorded under various guises, leading bands under the names Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., and also recording solo records under his own name. He also released a really good album with Will Johnson (of Centro-matic) and also released a one off record under the moniker Amalgamated Sons of Rest with Will Oldham and Alasdair Roberts. The vast majority of his records were released by Secretly Canadian.

Unsurprisingly for a career which spanned over 15 years, Molina’s music morphed and modified, filling a variety of niches and casting the man himself in a variety of guises. There is the stark and haunting folk music of his earliest Songs: Ohia releases, the blood-and-thunder indie rock of later ones and even country-inflected classic rock on the later Magnolia Electric Co. albums. But every album also has something in common, something unique to the man himself. Much of his music deals with life as an outsider, the constant struggle with feelings of inadequacy and isolation. But there is also something else, a sliver of beautiful glittering hope in the darkness. This is illustrated by Molina’s refusal to simply give in, his determination to persevere, his emphasis on how important it is to “try”.

I’ve chosen a collection of my very favourite Jason Molina tracks. It is in no way intended to be definitive, and a second person could easily choose an entirely different set of songs. For example, ‘Hold on, Magnolia’, ‘Just Be Simple’ and ‘Don’t it Look Like Rain’ have not made it on the list, despite being songs that I love more than most. Anyways, here we go…

Honey, Watch Your Ass

My first choice is taken from Pyramid Electric Co., a solo album released in 2004. To me it displays some of the finest lyricism, not just in Molina’s vast discography, but in music in general. See for example:

“She nearly burned the town again
With the look that she gave him
She covers her heart
With her hands and says a little useless praying
Never hurt anything”

And, in what I think must be one of my favourite lines of all time:

“That must be her up there
Perfume and cigarette smoke in her wild hair
She smells a little like a train
Hauling lilacs through the rain”

Darling…

‘Darling…’ appeared on Hecla & Griper, an EP released by Songs: Ohia way back in 1997. It’s not actually a Molina song, rather a cover of country artist Conrad Twitty. The beauty for me is that there is not a shred of irony in this cover. It’s a raw and lonely-sounding break-up song, a desperate plea for reconciliation from a lost love:

“Hello darling, it’s nice to see you
It’s been a long time
How’s your new love are you happy
Hope you’re doing alright
Just to know this means so much to me
What’s that darling, how am I doing
Guess I’m doing alright except I can’t sleep
And I cry all night till dawn
What I’m trying to say is that I love you and
I miss you and I’m sorry that I done you wrong”

Hecla & Griper was reissued on its 15^th anniversary (plus bonus tracks). Get it via Secretly Canadian.

Didn’t It Rain

Another Songs: Ohia track next, this time from the 2002 album of the same name (which has also recently been reissued as a deluxe package). ‘Didn’t It Rain’ is a heartfelt ode to both the hope and the hopelessness of existence. It opens with a consolation:

“No matter how dark the storm gets overhead
They say someone’s watching from the calm at the edge”

And continues as a kind of empathetic pep-talk.

“If they think you got it they’re going to beat it out of you
With work and debt whatever all else there is
You got to watch your own back
Try to see the light of goodness burning down the track
Through the blinding rain through the swaying wires”

This is Molina addressing things head-on, saying to his listeners, “yeah things are tough but here’s what we can do about it”. Emphasis on the “we”. There is solidarity here, a we’re-all-in-this-together call to arms to just keep going.

Whip-poor-will

This track didn’t appear on a proper album until a re-worked version was included on Magnolia Electric Co.’s 2009 album Josephine. But the version I am including on my list is a demo played by a lone Molina on his guitar (which you can hear on the bonus disc of the 10^th anniversary edition of Magnolia Electric Co.). ‘Whip-poor-will’ is wonderfully simple and full of a certain sense of resolute melancholy. With lines such as:

“So all of you folks in heaven not too busy ringing the bell
Some of us down here ain’t doing very well”

And:

“Still waiting
For you to sing that song again
The one you were singing at the very fall of man
It ain’t hallelujah but it might as well have been”

O! Grace

‘O! Grace’, from Josephine, is the latest of my choices and is included mainly to illustrate the deviance in sound from the earlier Songs: Ohia albums. What we get here is almost a traditional country song, complete with a pseudo-sing-along chorus of:

“Oh Grace, if you stop believing
That don’t mean that it just goes away
It’s a long way between horizons
And it gets farther every day”

Farewell Transmission

This is the opening track on Magnolia Electric Co., the album which many regard as Molina’s magnum opus. ‘Farewell Transmission’ is a rock song of epic scope, in which Molina threw together all of his friends and creative energies in seven and a half minutes of pure searing force. It begins with a swagger, and immediately sounds bigger than anything Molina had made before. The real highlight is the lyrics, which are jam-packed with stark, forlorn imagery of dying moons and strange shamanistic rituals. With passages such as:

“After tonight if you don’t want us to be a secret out of the past
I will resurrect it, I’ll have a good go at it
I’ll streak his blood across my beak and dust my feathers with his ashes
I can feel his ghost breathing down my back”

And:

“Mama here comes midnight, with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall”

The song also contains some lines which relate back to Molina’s favourite lyrical themes, and turns out to be one place where he expresses himself particularly eloquently:

“The real truth about it is no one gets it right
The real truth about it is we’re all supposed to try”

It is lines like this which created the adoring fandom, which turned people from casual listeners to zealous followers (including Strand of Oaks’s Timothy Showalter). And the reason? Because they offer comfort. Here is a man who spent his artistic career documenting his life’s struggles, beaming out his thoughts to thousands of lonely people around the country. And his message (in these two short lines at least) was a powerful one. He’s saying that we should all just keep going, that we are all doing okay.

Long Desert Train

To conclude I have chosen what is perhaps my favourite Jason Molina song of all. ‘Long Desert Train’ is another solo track, the shattering terminus of Pyramid Electric Co.. This is a very, very sad song, even for a man who made a living writing sad songs. It looks the sensation of inadequacy and a complete lack of self-worth straight in the eye. It feels like an outpouring of vulnerability, a rare faultering in the noble intentions of resilience and perseverance. It is a sad song with sadder end, and one which has added poignancy after Molina’s premature demise:

“Said you’d never be old enough
Or young enough
Tall enough
Or thin enough
Or smart enough
Or brave enough
Rich enough
Pretty enough
Strong enough
Good enough
Well you were to us

You wanted silence by itself
Just the word
You wanted peace by itself
Just to learn
There were things you couldn’t change
You got the dull pounding rain
You got the last car in the long desert train

You almost made it”

You can buy the vast majority of Jason Molina’s music via Secretly Canadian.

P.S. The last year or so has seen various Jason Molina tribute albums, including Farwell Transmission: A Tribute To Jason Molina from Rock The Cause and a collection of tributes and compilations from The Wave Pictures.

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