Molina & Johnson

For years now there has been an interesting subset of the umbrella genre indie music: alt-country. The genre has always been removed from stereotypically indie values, favoring straight-forward rock, old-fashioned Southern Gothic lyrics, and country values as worn as the grooves on any Southern man’s first Lynyrd Skynyrd vinyl. Whereas other traditional genres are revamped and stylized in the indie world, alt-country has remained unwaveringly loyal to its roots. Molina & Johnson’s self-titled debut album squarely fits the mold of this genre, providing candid, authentically American songs. However, what the album gains in its masterful portrayal of classic Americana, it loses in musical originality and complexity.

Molina & Johnson is the collaboration of alt-country legends Will Johnson of Centro-Matic and Jason Molina of Songs: Ohia and The Magnolia Electric Co. In the tradition of many classic country and blues albums, the self-titled release is sparsely orchestrated, contributing to the feeling that it was created by two talented and mournful men kicking back, imbibing, loading shotguns, and playing music.

This spare, minimalist approach to the music creates a bare, autumnal album that’s at once soothing, depressing and—unfortunately—less than gripping. Johnson’s husky growl reverberates around Molina’s baleful, tremulous cry and the two voices combine to nice effect, presenting two different sides to the classic American man: bruised and tough, soulful and exposed. The duo exhibits an effortless mastery of many classic tropes, employed without pretense to keep the album engaging and honest. Unfortunately the album’s traditional song structures and generally unremarkable music cause the songs to run together, and, at times, it feels like Molina & Johnson are playing the same song with small variations over and over again.

Many of the tracks are more blues than they are country. “All Gone, All Gone,” is about as dismal as the title would suggest. It features a duet between Johnson and Texas songsmith Sarah Jaffe over a plodding guitar line that sounds as if it’s plucked from an early Robert Johnson recording. Featuring a singing saw—an instrument whose existence is easy to forget, but whose presence is impossible to ignore—the song feels like a slow drive down a pitch-black southern road in the heart of autumn. It’s hauntingly beautiful and the traditional sounds it employs are not often heard in modern music.

Molina & Johnson struggle with the limitations of their chosen genre, however, occasionally exhausting their limited supply of musical and thematic tropes. Indicative of the album’s primary shortcoming, “In the Avalon/Little Killer” is a maudlin piano ballad that falls short of the powerful simplicity that “All Gone, All Gone” achieves, and for which it strives. While emotive and marginally moving, the music is fairly boring, never quite leaving the ground. It is chilling, but only slightly so, and while it maintains the unmediated feeling of someone sitting down and heedlessly expressing their emotions over a few simple chords, this self-indulgent approach to songwriting can make for a boring listen.

Eschewing the simplistic, traditional structure of their other songs, the more uptempo “Almost Let You In” resists the stagnation with which the rest of the album flirts, and is one of the record’s better tracks. “Almost Let You In” features a comparatively complex and propulsive guitar melody. However, the addition of a distorted single-note piano line that glides like a phantom and the far-off stomp of the drums is what truly makes the song. The number also highlights the strength of the vocalists both on their individual verses and the tightly coiled haunt of their lush harmonies. Easily the most stirring on the album, “Almost Let You In” maintains the melancholic, genuine feel of the entire record while adding more complex and modern elements that serve as a welcome respite from the duller aspects that are pervasive throughout the album.

While “Almost Let You In” shows Molina & Johnson pushing their genre to pleasant effect, the tracks that stay comfortably within the genre and play it with an authentic familiarity have just as much merit. Songs like “Twenty Cycles to the Ground” and “Each Star Marks a Day,” while doing nothing to transcend or reinvigorate the genre, are a testament to the preeminent mastery of alt-country exhibited by Molina & Johnson.

In Molina & Johnson’s melancholic strums of acoustic guitar, there are generations of American songwriters and miles of frontier. Both singers have explored a similar fascination with American themes in their other bands. Here, these traditional themes and sounds are omnipresent, and something about Molina & Johnson’s minimalist approach makes them feel better developed. Many similarly spare acts craft their natural sounds. They record separate tracks for fretboard squeaks, chair cricks, and the sound of a thumb dully thumping against the guitar’s body. Here, the sounds feel like natural parts of the recording. You can almost hear the whiskey being poured in between takes, and this honest and authentic quality makes the album.