Review Summary: What about us when we're down here in it
Jason Molina lived his whole life in the darkness. His humble beginnings in a trailer park in Oberlin, Ohio influenced much of his subject matter throughout his career. Often expressing great longing for the midwest, particularly that of his adopted hometown of Chicago, Molina captured stark beauty through his elegiac lyricism, where his words are at once a catalyst and a beacon for those sharing the same destitute joy as himself.
Jason was 28 when
Didn’t It Rain came out, and he had already released eight albums in the five years between the eponymous debut of Songs: Ohia and then. He had recently relocated to Indiana from Chicago and longed to go back. While his later work under the name of Magnolia Electric Co. exercised an emphatic wanderlust for the midwest wilderness, Songs: Ohia’s destination was centralized, placing great emphasis on his love for the greater area of Chicago. Recorded live in studio with various musicians forming a 2002 edition of Songs: Ohia, one of
Didn’t It Rain’s strengths lies in its uncompromising alone-but-not-alone feel brought by a breathtakingly pristine performance by Molina and Co. Songs: Ohia was Jason Molina’s masterminded project that consisted of him as the conductor of a carousel of guest musicians that ran from the mid-90’s to the release of
Didn’t It Rain when it transformed into the Americana band Magnolia Electric Co.
Didn’t It Rain was the bleak bookend to the artistic presentation of love and despair found in Songs: Ohia.
Following suit of its predecessor
Ghost Tropic’s walk into the abyss,
Didn’t It Rain wastes no time getting into its thesis: lamentations over sublime acoustic arrangements. The cover evokes the sound of the album to a tee, with a silhouetted painting of birds atop a tree with a sole one flying above. The monochrome theme was similarly explored on 2000’s
Ghost Tropic where Jason had shed most of his songs of devotion for songs of despair. It’s presented musically as well with the stripping down of the backing band for a more straightforward acoustic approach, hearkening back to the bands earlier albums but with a more gloomy overtone. On ”Steve Albini’s Blues” and “Ring The Bell,” his guitar strumming has a rhythmic urgency, underpinning his words with an advancing march. His cautious strumming on the title track and ”Two Blue Lights,” however, create a similar effect; ultimately producing a dichotomy with likewise results. The album’s live-in-studio nature gives a very organic quality to it, with an excellent and pristine sound recorded and produced by Edan Cohen. It maintains a warm and full tone while also feeling cold and desolate because of the mix of open major and minor chords, reverb, and natural drum sounds. The music is gorgeous, but his words are all the more potent.
One of Molina’s lyrical trademarks is his frequency of writing eloquent yet cryptic imagery before devolving into poignant and sorrowful repetition like on the reviving closer “Blue Chicago Moon” with
”But if the blues are your hunter // You will come face to face // That darkness and desolation // And the endless, endless, endless, endless, endless, endless depression” which reinforces the grip that depression holds on its victims. Jason’s expressive but steady voice accentuates his candid messaging to mean so much more. He follows this up with the final message of the entire name of Songs: Ohia with
“But you are not helpless // Try to beat it // And live through space's loneliness” which is the single most inspiring moment of the entire band. Never before had a resolution or favorable promise been found for fighting life’s misery until the bowing out of Molina’s dark passenger for a couple minutes as the record fades. All the while this is happening, Jennie Benford’s off-key harmonizing in the background emphasizes Jason’s assurances with a gorgeously contrasting twang to Molina’s passionate belting. It’s a beautiful ending to a name so deeply rooted in sadness that even the unhappiest of people can relate and find solace in.
In a way,
Didn’t It Rain is as much a love letter to himself as it is a letter to the blues. Jason Molina was troubled beyond comprehension, and expressed that side of himself predominantly within his music, but he always found a way to come to terms with it and find some resolve you could hold onto until the next album’s unsure destination. Jason’s long dark blues may have overcome him in the end, but his fight lives on forever through his music.
