Only so many songs can be written about a girl. For Songs: Ohia's latest album, Didn't It Rain, Jason Molina explores topics far different from love and relationships, something that perhaps has just as much to do with who he really is.
Didn't It Rain has two themes, the plight of the blue collar worker and Molina's departure from the Chicago uber-scene. The two themes are actually intertwined though, as Molina's move from Chicago is from a neighborhood of artists to a working class neighborhood in south Philadelphia.
Molina sings in "Cross the Road, Molina" of his inner worries of living in Chicago. He worries "how fast we can lose it" and "how bad we're outnumbered," relating Chicago to a blade hovering over the rest of the Midwest and working class America.
Molina proclaims himself as a product of that American working class. In "Blue Factory Flame," he asks to have his body left "in an empty street to remind me how it used to be." Molina wants no ceremony, but instead only a reminder of the pleasures of life that he remembers from his childhood, like a baseball game on the radio and fishing. From this empty street gravesite, Molina can see steel ships approaching, relating himself to these ships as they were born from the same hands that he was.
In the title track of the album, Molina sings a song of empowerment for blue collar workers, a call for brotherhood among those who struggle. The oppressive force of "work and debt" make it hard to not keep from going under. Molina promises not to "turn his back" to a friend in need, a "light of goodness ... through the blinding rain."
Perhaps the most striking thing about this song, though, is Molina's voice. Molina's voice has always been strong and unique, but in this song and this album, it shimmers. Backed by Jennie Benford, his call of assurance to the over-worked working man are sung with a pure voice. The vocals are so beautifully performed, that a song like "Two Blue Lights" can remind the listener of Low with its earth-moving male-female vocals.
Didn't It Rain is very much a way for Molina to bring himself back to the world he grew up in, a world that is more real and more vital if only because things don't come as easily.
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