It would probably sadden Jason Molina to know that I think this record is the best thing he's ever done. This album sounds like what I thought the bands that played in bars sounded like, before I had ever stepped foot into a bar and heard how ass-y bar bands actually are. Sure it's just Crazy Horse redux...but I find this format so much more interesting than the versions that appear on the proper studio albums...with the edges sawn off. This gritty performance (given in Belgium of all places) just has the right feel for what makes "bar rock" work...the bad boy swagger, the sense of sin and sweat and Calvinistic desperation.
No line probably sums up the appeal of this entire album like "This didn't used to be so hard/it used to be impossible". Delivered with a wail of the damned...a man that knows that his past is bleak, but the future will only be worse, it encapsulates everything that makes this cinematic style work. You can totally hear this as a soundtrack to a film like Blood Simple or One False Move...the simmering southern heat building as a jealous lover walks upstairs with a gun, not sure if he's going to kill her or have mind blowing sex that he'll regret for the rest of his life.
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