Jason Molina...

Well Mr. Molina and Magnolia Electric Co. have released a nice little five song EP that compliments his recent What Comes After The Blues quite nicely. The EP is titled Hard To Love A Man (that song coming from What Comes After...) and attaches 4 songs with the title song. I assume that these are b-sides or outtakes or rarities. There's a cover of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves Of London" which is quite nice. For Magnolia Electric Co. it's more of the same. That's a blessing and a curse. If you liked What Comes After The Blues then you'll probably be satisfied with this EP. It's very much in the same vein of plodding hybrid electric/acoustic country rock jams polulated by heartbreak and dissatisfaction. While I do like What Comes After The Blues I do find that it drags a bit because a) the songs start to sound very much alike and b) the unrelenting heartbreak becomes oppressive for me. I contrast this to the live Magnolia Electric Co. shows I've seen which are loud, rocking, guitar heavy affairs, and I wonder why we don't get more of that on record. When Molina put out the live record Trials And Errors I was sure What Comes After... was going to rock and rock loudly. Not the case. So then I thought Molina might use the very flexible EP format to showcasee some louder more rockin' versions of those tunes or, at least, some interesting reinterpretations. Not the case. Hard to Love A Man is just more Molina plying the style that he seems to have settled into at this point in time. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I kinda feel like something has to give at some point. If you haven't seen Magnolia Electric Co. live you really should. Great show, far more powerful than the record.

1 song from Hard To Love A Man:

Werewolves In London