We get no second chance in this life. - (Captain Badass, from the album Axxess & Ace)
Honesty. All of Jason Molina's songs were doused in utter honesty. This man looked deepest into his own eyes, his own heart, his own soul, and it is there where he found his songs. And out of these dark recesses, came forth pure wrenching lines delivered in his delicate voice, tingling with vibrato. Sometimes his syllables of sentiment seemed to linger above the music lines, a bit longer than they seemed they should. His voice would tremble. Like Neil Young. It could fall apart at any time. We all know the feeling. Those moments when you are talking, but holding back the tears, trying to keep the boulder in our throats down, which will turn into an avalanche of tears at any moment. Honesty. One thing is for sure, when Molina sang that "Something's gotta change" we can be sure he meant it.
We are proof that the heart is a risky fuel to burn. - (Being in Love, from the album The Lioness)
Many songwriters attempt to craft their generic songs about heartbreak. A million pop songs have lived and died all based on heartbreak. I am numb to most of them. They do not ring as true as a Molina song. Because, Molina did not sing about heartbreak, he sang about heartache. There's nothing true about heartbreak. Our hearts do not snap in an instant, left broken. Nothing is quick about it. We all suffer heartache - moments, hours, days, weeks, sometimes months, of alternating dull or sharp pains, depressing lows, manic crying sessions. That burning pit gouged into our chests, thumps and beats, and bleeds out. Over time. Nothing quick about it.
Molina's album, The Lioness, became the soundtrack to one vivid heartache session of my own. Each song on that album is the perfect backing track for a painful, and long, break-up. For example, there are two songs dedicated to bloodthirsty women, in jungle feline form - Tigress, and Lioness. In each song, Molina cries out as if he is the bleeding zebra on the savannah, torn away from his pack, left to dry out in the sun. The predatory female having just eaten his heart out, only. "I want to feel my heart break, if it must break, in your jaws/Want you to lick my blood off your paws."
Momma, here comes midnight, with a dead moon its jaws. - Farewell Transmission, from the album Magnolia Electric Co.
Not only could Molina so perfectly describe his pains, and in doing so our own pains, he was also a master of painting poetry with his lyrics. Each line of his songs layered upon each other, individual emotional brushstrokes, coming together to create the masterpiece. On the last Molina album I bought, Josephine, he perfectly describes the girl named Grace on the song named after her. No, he doesn't describe her, he paints her portrait in the lines he crafts:
She said "I've been the stockyard's pony"
She said 'I've been the mountain engine's roll,
From Chicago to West Virginia,
Ive been as lonesome as the world's first ghost."
(I just picked that song out at random. Listen to any Molina song and you can find beautiful sensory stanzas just like this)
In my life I have had my doubts, but tonight I think I've worked it out with all of them. - Hold On, Magnolia, from the album Magnolia Electric Co.
Even in the deepest despair of his songs, I can grasp onto a shadow of hope. Something that we can all use to pull ourselves up out of the pits we throw ourselves down into. But this pit is a deep one. I had read last year that Molina was not doing well. That rehab and medical bills had bankrupted him. That he had quit making music to raise chickens and sheep in West Virginia. That his liver was failing. And then it failed.
We lost a good one last week. Rest in peace, Jason Molina.
