2 out of 5

Label: Secretly Canadian

Produced by: Mike Mogis

Okay.  I think I’ve been holding onto this forever out of some type of reverence for Molina’s passing, because I’ve pretty much disliked it from the moment I listened to it.

Look: all acoustic albums have their place.  Roddy Frame’s solo work is pretty fantastic to my ears, and obviously there’s a bamillion thousand more examples than just that one.  Minimalism also has its place, for sure.  While I sold the Loren Connors discs I had, I appreciated their resonance, and LMC’s explorations of emptiness.  And totes sad, dreary stuff works too…  I mean, hell, I’d toss the last Songs:Ohia disc under a cloud of sad, acoustic minimalism, but I think that record is amazing.  In all of these instances, though, or at least the ones I find worthwhile, there’s something going on.  Whether it’s an actual rhythm or hook or some type of experimentation with mood, with atmosphere.  And Pyramid Electric rarely, rarely gets there.  These feel like sketches of songs, lyrics writ that Molina didn’t feel like developing further but wanted to record in some fashion, and thus Mike Mogis sat down and helped out and then we have some music.  I’m sure that’s not at all the case, but that’s how it feels.  And Mogis might be part of the problem of the general tedium of the disc: the producer’s sonic (as in a bit too clean) and yet flat sound has worked well in some odd instances, like Racebannon, where it’s a weird juxtaposition against the noise of that group, but on something as sparse as this record, the sound needs more depth that just isn’t there.

Some head-nodable mantras slip through, like the opening title track, but on the whole, ‘Pyramid Electric Co.’ lacks the emotion of Songs:Ohia.  It’s Molina stripped to the bare minimum, which can work a song at a time, but offers very little to hold your attention if you try to listen to more than that in a sitting.