Magnolia Electric Co. - "What Comes After the Blues"

Jason Molina and the Magnolia Electric Co. latest CD "What Comes After the Blues," sounds a lot like Neil Young and Crazy Horse -- and that's a good thing.

In a review in The Ohio Post by Chris Deville, he writes that Molina and Magnolia Electric put a new twist on an old sound.

"From the start, it's tough to ignore how much "What Comes After the Blues," the new record from Magnolia Electric Co., sounds like Neil Young. Comparing Jason Molina's band to Young is a tired practice, but this album is the closest to a rip-off Molina has recorded, so avoiding the reference is almost impossible.

"The Dark Don't Hide It" starts things off with crunchy Crazy Horse guitars and the most upbeat tempo on the album. The quartet of songs that makes up the first half is uniformly great, all songs that reveal themselves after five or six listens. "Leave the City" is perhaps the best song here, featuring a mournful trumpet, twangy guitars and graceful piano under Molina's typically dark lyrics."

From a Arizona Daily Wildcat (April 21, 2005) review:

"Guitarist Jason Groth likes to joke about how he came into Magnolia Electric Co. He suggests that Neil Young, Molina's most obvious point of influence, may have indirectly been responsible.

'I always tell people that I think I was asked in the band because I was in a Neil Young cover band,' Groth said. 'The bass player of Magnolia [Pete Schreiner] and I formed a Neil Young album cover band and Jason came and saw us do Tonight's the Night.'

In truth, it was Jason's Indiana band (The Coke Dares) that actually captured Molina's interests and he recruited Groth and drummer Mark Rice to join Magnolia Electric Co. in 2002. With members from Illinois, Ohio and Indiana, the band is a decidedly Midwestern affair, which subtly influences their sound."

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