Magnolia Electric Co.

In late March, Jason Molina and his Magnolia Electric Co. took the stage of Bloomington, Ind.’s Buskirk-Chumley Theater, an old movie house where Hoagy Carmichael once held band battles. It was a night of new-release celebration, full of tour-kick-off energy and local well-wishing before the band headed out in support of its new Secretly Canadian recording, What Comes After the Blues.

Better known until recently for recording under the moniker Songs: Ohia, Molina (pictured second from right) had a chance to demonstrate the strength and cohesiveness of his new band at this hometown sendoff. Personal songs with a smoky aftertaste, set in moody stillness, have always been Molina’s gift. But now—as Magnolia Electric Co. digs into each tune with jubilant energy—his creations shake with the instinctual verve of a great American rock band.

What Comes After the Blues arrives barely a blink after the early-2005 release of live album Trials and Errors. It hums with the musical empathy of a band that’s been hitting the road hard and hungry. “We recorded it in November of 2004, immediately after we got back from Spain,” says Molina. “We taped Trials and Errors live in Belgium in spring of 2003, then threw out most of those songs and started brand new, with the songwriting process happening on the road.”

Magnolia Electric Co. struck while the iron was hot, recording at Electrical Audio in Chicago, where Molina had previously worked on Songs: Ohia projects. “The key,” says Molina, “besides who is on the record, was to do it with Steve Albini because he brings real good understanding to the simple but complicated way I want to do records. We want to do them live, playing live in a room with no vocal overdubs.

“It was fast—three days. The way the songs were written and the way the recording turned out has 100 percent to do with working with a band where there is no instruction giving. It’s done very intuitively. I just give them the most skeletal framework and it falls together on it’s own.”

The band’s organic foundations gird Molina’s thematic quests with arrangements that have a primal feel for poetic American rock. Hammer down, he’s ready for weeks and months of asphalt, gasoline fumes and cramped, temporary rooms. “When you get a group of musicians you really feel like you can play with, you make a lot of decisions and choices and sacrifices to keep that happening as long as you can.”