Transmissions From The Molinaverse - 29th August

A regular update on all things JM

Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go - August 2006

Hey everyone,

Hope you’re all doing well out there.

A little round up today of some stuff we feel might be of interest! From Will Oldham discussing the ‘September 11’ writing session in The Guardian to a newly discovered (to us) ‘Let Me Go’ cover photo there is hopefully some interesting stuff to dig into here.

We’re also trying something new out here as detailed below and your thoughts on this are most definitely welcome.

All the best,

S&D x

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“Molina’s reaction was the most interesting because of his ability to spontaneously improvise lyrics.”

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy recently undertook The Guardian’s ‘Reader Interview’, answering questions submitted by Guardian readers.

An interesting chat with an artist we are sure many of you will also share an affinity with, the topic of the writing session for the song ‘September 11’ is also discussed.

Read the full piece here

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“All the musicians I know that are around my age love Molina. It kind of goes without saying, I feel like.”

The brilliant MJ Lenderman recently gave an interview to Stereogum that touched on Jason’s influence on the music he and his peers are making.

Citing Molina records as an influence is a common trend amongst this generation of songwriters and one we are always very happy to hear.

Read the full piece here

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We recently stumbled onto this picture we hadn’t seen before - taken from the album cover shoot for ‘Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go’, we thought we would use this weeks anniversary of that record as an excuse to share it with you all.

With our thanks to photographer Jim Newbury for kindly giving us permission to share. You can find more of his work here

From Jim:

“I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend a bit of time with Jason for the photo session. Obviously a brilliant songwriter and musician, and really sweet dude.”

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Hemlock - Ben Swanson recommends.

This is something new for S&D and something we’ve been chatting about doing for a while, so we’d be very interested on your thoughts and if this is something you would appreciate more of.

So many of our conversations recently about Jason’s music and legacy have been this new crop of artists making wonderful music where we feel his impact and influence.

Many of these artists, as mentioned above with MJ Lenderman, are explicitly flying the flag and shouting about Jason’s work and many are just making music we feel comes from a similar place.

We recently had a conversation with Tony Presley of the fantastic label Keeled Scales about Molina’s music and he referenced being at a recent Big Thief show - he mused on how a lot of the young people in the queue excited to see their favourite band may not be aware of records like Magnolia Electric Co. yet but are well on their way to finding them and how exciting that discovery is going to be for them.

Anyway, with all that in mind, Secretly Canadian co-founder Ben Swanson has been sharing some music with us from artists he feels are carrying the torch. We don’t know if they’re fans of Jason’s music or if he was an influence on them, but we for sure feel these are some of the next generation of great songwriters.

So, to cut a long story short, please meet Hemlock. The work of Louisiana born and Chicago based musician Carolina Chauffe.

Ben’s first pick for this series is the album ‘Talk Soon’, you can find it below.