The Battered Optimism of Jason Molina
Reflecting on the misunderstood legacy of the Songs: Ohia musician
In Hawaiian mythology, the story of Ohia, Pele and Lehua goes as such: Pele - the fire goddess - is attracted to Ohia, who is in love with a woman named Lehua. In a jealous fit, Pele transforms Ohia into a tree. A devastated Lehua seeks help from a family God and is transformed into the red blossom of the ohia tree - forever connecting the two lovers. Picking the flowers off the tree leads to rain because it causes the lovers to separate.
The story contains the sort of blend of beauty and pain that Jason Molina - who performed under the moniker Songs: Ohia - captured in his music. On some of his best songs, he stared into the darkness without being fully engulfed by it. On others, he made beauty sound terrifying by capturing the full-body terror that comes with realizing that you could screw up something perfect and beautiful and intrinsically ephemeral.
It’s the former quality that turned 2003’s The Magnolia Electric Co. into Molina’s magnum opus. In particular, it’s what turned that album’s opener “Farewell Transmission” into Molina’s most recognizable tune. It’s seven minutes of whiplash-inducing shifts between darkness and light - quite literally beginning with the electricity going out across the town. “I will try and know whatever I try”, he declares as a mission statement in the triumphant first chorus. In the second chorus, his message remains the same but this time more imperative: “Come on! Let’s try and know whatever we try”, he urges, extending a hand from one weary soul to whatever other weary soul may be listening.
But darkness waits around the corner as it normally does - captured by Molina in one horrifying, transfixing and deeply, deeply vivid metaphor: “Mama here comes midnight / With the dead moon in its jaw / Must be the big star about the fall”. In the end, amidst the solitude of “long dark blues”, Molina doesn’t offer much in the way of consolation, but he does deliver another imperative: “Long dark blues / Listen”. Don’t shirk the darkness - stare directly at it and don’t you dare flinch - he demands, rightly.
“Honest” has become a cliché thrown around to describe countless singer-songwriter albums these days, but if you want a reminder of what it means to truly live up to that descriptor listen to the work of Molina - who was so unflinching in his honesty it could make you shudder. “Coxcomb Red” embodies this - an ode to grieving with religious overtones - as does “Lioness” - a foreboding tune that turns desire into forms physical and deeply unsettling.
Molina was criminally overlooked at his creative peak - for proof of this watch Molina’s live performances from the early 2000s on Youtube, as he performs some of the greatest songs of that decade in bar basements where audience numbers are almost certainly in the double digits. Arguably, the bulk of appreciation for Molina’s genius has arrived since his death in 2013 - aided in no small part by a series of reissues of his early classics from the label he pioneered, Secretly Canadian.
All of this is to say that I, like so many, have only ever known Molina as a ghost - something which no doubt transforms the experience of listening to his music. To many, Molina’s death in 2013 - caused by multiple organ failure owing to alcoholism - was shocking but not surprising. After all, this was a man who constantly reminded us of our inevitable demise in his music, and in one song even told us where to bury him when the time came.
Admittedly, Molina’s tragic and premature end was made less surprising by 2006’s bleak Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go (which he released under his own name). But contrary to common opinion, I don’t believe his iconic Songs: Ohia albums - released between 1997 and 2003 - foretold his tragic end. In fact, I would argue the opposite - I think they presented a man who, yes, was more troubled and weighed down than most, but who was also far more committed to living than most.
Molina’s music rejects simple interpretations, and yet an overly simple narrative has formed in the decade since his passing - one that wrongly assumes that Molina lived his entire life swallowed by darkness and dread. I’ve even seen Molina, and his addiction, used on social media to argue that only helplessly troubled people make good music - that old, flawed, dangerous, and yet stubbornly persistent myth that good art must come from great pain, and a good life leads to mediocre art.
Beyond the fact that Molina’s music as Songs: Ohia rebukes this firmly - with Molina’s firm commitment to finding silver linings - it’s also plainly disprovable. Molina, as confirmed in the excellent Erin Osmon penned biography, Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost, lived most of his adult life as a disciplined, reliable creative who applied traditional 9-5 structures to his songwriting and he didn’t actually develop a drinking problem until he was into his thirties. By this point, he had already written his best, most emotive material. This is instructive, and something I’ve thought about a lot after listening to a lot of Songs: Ohia lately - Molina wrote his best music when he looked into the darkness without being consumed by it. It’s a precarious, but deeply difficult, task to do as such. Molina, ultimately, couldn’t, but his music continues to provide a roadmap for how we can.