Magnolia Electric Co.-Songs: Ohia

I grew up in a small, beaten-down town, one that is both part of the Rust Belt and part of Appalachia; what this means is that one can find their misery often doubled. It’s one of those rare pockets of America that exists in the public eye as pure myth— the red barn and golden cornfield, the football captain and prom queen, the abandoned trailer park with the tattered American flag—but the reality is much stranger and sadder than the iconography. Perhaps no artist manages to capture these images, both their loneliness and their mythic quality, more than the late musician Jason Molina.