Trials and Errors

Recorded only a few months after they formed, Trials And Errors captures Jason Molina's new band Magnolia Electric Co. on one magical night in Brussels in 2003. It is a scintillating audio document of one of America's most important contemporary live acts evolving into something really special and doing what it does best -- whipping an audience into a frenzy. This set captures Molina and Co right after Molina had retired the Songs: Ohia machine in favor of this powerful new vision of his. Two years in the planning process, the new project took its name from the last Songs: ohia full-length album. Composed of a nucleus of four members, this particular show captures the newly christened band on its first tour in its earliest state.

Fans may recognize that Trials and Errors comes peppered with a homage or two to Neil Young. One could, in fact, argue that the album is an existential response to Tonight's the Night. While from the songwriting perspective Molina is often pegged as the perennial downer, this is not, like Young's a record born out of a series of sudden tragedies, but rather out of a whole life of growing up and out in the Midwest, surrounded by a small town mentality in a wide open space.