(2018) Songs Ohia - Love & Work; The Lioness Sessions

Review: 
In 1999, Jason Molina had fallen in love with the woman who would later become his wife, and the relationship would inform a set of songs he recorded in Glasgow, Scotland with Aiden Moffat and David Gow of Arab Strap serving as producers. But the joy of new love didn’t communicate in his music as strongly as the baggage that came with it — waves of doubt, crippling uncertainty, and the terrible awareness that you’ve set yourself up for the possibility of crushing heartbreak. At the same time, Molina was a man who struggled to be strong enough to rise to the responsibilities of a long-term relationship, and to be what his love needed him to be. The album that came out of this period, 2000’s The Lioness, was as spare and unnervingly personal as anything he would ever record, often featuring little more than Molina’s plaintive vocals and his guitar, and it would go on to be one of the defining works in his catalog. Eighteen years after The Lioness was first released — and five years after Molina’s death due to organ failure brought on by severe alcoholism — the album has been given an expanded reissue in Love & Work: The Lioness Sessions, which features the nine songs from the original release along with seven tracks recorded during the same sessions that didn’t make the cut, and four tunes he cut on a four-track machine a few days before he began work on The Lioness. While much of the music on The Lioness is purposefully minimal, the arrangements are expanded just a bit on several of the outtakes. 

Tracklist: 
01 - The Black Crow.flac 
02 - Tigress.flac 
03 - Nervous Bride.flac 
04 - Being in Love.flac 
05 - Lioness.flac 
06 - Coxcomb Red.flac 
07 - Back On Top.flac 
08 - Baby Take a Look.flac 
09 - Just a Spark.flac 
10 - On My Way Home (Lioness Sessions Outtake).flac 
11 - Never Fake It (Lioness Sessions Outtake).flac 
12 - From the Heart (Lioness Sessions Outtake).flac 
13 - It Gets Harder Over Time (Lioness Sessions Outtake).flac 
14 - I Promise Not to Quit (Lioness Sessions Outtake).flac 
15 - Neighbors of Our Age (Lioness Sessions Outtake).flac 
16 - Pyrate II (Even Now) (Lioness Sessions Outtake).flac 
17 - Velvet Marching Band (Lissy’s Sessions).flac 
18 - Raw (Lissy’s Sessions).flac 
19 - Already Through (Lissy’s Sessions).flac 
20 - Wonderous Love (Lissy’s Sessions).flac 

Summary: 
Country: Scotland 
Genre: indie-folk, indie-rock