Description:
Opening lyrically with lightning and ending with a spark, The Lioness, the fourth full-length album from Songs: Ohia, the loose collective headed by maverick troubadour Jason Molina, is the band's most rounded and satisfying yet. Aided by various members of Arab Strap and Appendix Out and his Ohian perennials, Molina responds to the cold, grey climate of Scotland by flattening his vowels and chilling out, though without losing the flammable intensity endemic to his songwriting. His cracked, plaintive voice may not be the purest, but it wraps itself around tunes of desolate candour and lyrics as winsome and allegorical as broken
Opening lyrically with lightning and ending with a spark, The Lioness, the fourth full-length album from Songs: Ohia, the loose collective headed by maverick troubadour Jason Molina, is the band's most rounded and satisfying yet. Aided by various members of Arab Strap and Appendix Out and his Ohian perennials, Molina responds to the cold, grey climate of Scotland by flattening his vowels and chilling out, though without losing the flammable intensity endemic to his songwriting. His cracked, plaintive voice may not be the purest, but it wraps itself around tunes of desolate candour and lyrics as winsome and allegorical as broken love will allow. The inevitable comparison is to Will Oldham, but this reference does an injustice to both. Where Oldham's obliquity can be both wilful and masterly, Molina's elemental anthems gatecrash life with a tenderness located somewhere between his roots in prog rock and his heart in alternative country. The sparse, stripped-down arrangements, led by low-slung, post-Slint tenor guitar, intertwine with Molina's metaphorical explorations of nature and his musings on the pursuit and subsequent retreat of love, most notably on tracks like "Tigress", "The Black Crow" and "Coxcomb Red". Quietly impassioned and darkly beautiful, The Lioness is music from and for the heart. --David Vincent
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Manufacturer: Secretly Canadian
Release date: 25 January 2000
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0656605003023 UPC: 656605003023
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