Jason Molina & Will Johnson

Living near Denton TX, it isn’t exactly hard for a music-lover to be intimately familiar with the name and work of Will Johnson. The band he is perhaps most well-known for, Centro-matic, is a North Texas icon. He may be spending more time in our state’s capital these days, but that doesn’t keep us from claiming him as our own. The guy has been busy. He played lead guitar for Patterson Hood supporting Hood’s solo album. After that, he has toured as the drummer for the much ballyhooed Monsters of Folk. Now, he and his buddy, Magnolia Electric Company’s Jason Molina, have released a pretty solid disc of mellow-indie gold.

Stephen M. Duesner, who happens to be one of the best writers going today,didnt really care much for the self-titled album. While I have enjoyed the disc, a couple of his points are valid. Duesner informs readers that anyone who is unfamiliar with the work of Johnson and/or Molina shouldn’t use this disc as a primer for their other works. Fair enough, I agree. He also says that the track, “Twenty Cycles to the Ground” is the album’s most accessible track, and I agree with that as well. Regardless, I think the differences between this album and the albums from their back catalogs is where the value lies. When you have two talented artists performing together, why create a mish-mash of reheated material? Molina & Johnson succeeds in bringing something new to their fans who have no problem with the fellas branching out a bit.

LISTEN: Molina & Johnson “Twenty Cycles to the Ground”

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Tags: Centro-matic, Jason Molina, Magnolia Electric Company, Monsters of Folk, Patterson Hood, Will Johnson