Almost the second the timer ticked over from 7:49 to 7:50 on the end-of-the-railway-line blues of "Hold on Magnolia", the achingly sad and beautiful bookend to 2003's Magnolia Electric Co., you could sense that whatever demons that have haunted Jason Molina's music since his first releases under the Songs:Ohia moniker many moons ago were looming again, rearing their heads. Not so much that the ghosts and pains, such a regular feature in Molina's ouvre (both lyrically and musically) were overpowering - far from - Magnolia... saw the Songs:Ohia collaborative finally reaching the awesome heights past glories have hinted at, and the resulting album, a slow-burning blue-collar spooky feather-touch (dare I say it) at times good-time-ROCK masterpiece, little short of genius. No, the question was, after possibly making an album so perfect, so electrifying, and potentially so destructive, was where the demons were pointing next. The first stages came in late 2003, when in a move destined for greatness in the big book of "how Americana mirrors Prince", Molina changed the name of his now-cemented group from Songs:Ohia to, suitably - The Magnolia Electric Co. Possibly as a sign of how affecting one album can be, possibly this was Molina finally ditching the Songs:Ohia albatross so uniquely tied around his personal, morbid neck and exercising his band-head as much as his own processes, but the times certainly are a-changing for the Chicago stargazer.

This collection of seven songs was originally a companion piece to the aforementioned album, (as the sleeve notes to Magnolia... suggest), the songs being written around the same time. Regardless, this is the first release since the big swing. And it's an intriguing one. It is worth mentioning that The Pyramid Electric Co, despite being born of the same parent, is distinctly different from its bigger, blustering brother. Without a doubt the sparsest songs Molina has written since 1999's Ghost Tropic (interestingly, with the same producer, Mike Mogis, whose recent work with Bright Eyes shows off how engaging richness from a mournful voice and a few fractured chords is his speciality), the original feel for the album is that it's comprised of a septet of demos, or first-take cast-offs leftover from the Magnolia sessions.

Second and third listens pretty much taunt you and the guilt of assuming these fantastically complex songs as mere demos takes over. For instance, the opening title track takes hold the ideas of some of the bleaker, wailing slide guitar riffs from earlier Molina work, and blackens them with soot, ash and skeletal fretwork, and the resulting eight minute monster ends more of a lesson in recreating darkness than exuberant rock n' roll. "You'll have friends who won't come home/You'll see their bones not separated yet from death" - party hard. Likewise, on "Divison St. Girl", without a doubt one of the best-crafted examples of Molina's deft lyrical ability ("It's just you and me and the gravity"), and has been a staple in the Songs:Ohia live set for years. It's delicate, it's acidic, it's Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska fucked up and drunk on its own sense of self-worthlessness, and there's no way it would end up as its definitive version being a half-recorded demo. At times, the sheer emotional weight is enough to send shivers. If Mogis had the ability on Ghost Tropic to transform owls, pan pipes and simply mentioning the goddamn ocean into the eeriest and sinister sounds this side of Hades, then you can appreciate the way the raw sounds are played with, and mournfully opaque the piano (used furtively on "Red Comet Dust") and trademark Molina murder-chords. At one stage you can hear the chair the singer residing in creak as he leans forward - THAT'S how stark Pyramid... is, and in testimony to the two phenomena bearing their names, the mysticism, open spaces and, oddly for an album so intent in its sparseness, the warmness of this album does indeed produce the perfect contrast to the shimmering, silvery-white beauty of its predecessor.

It's not the most pleasant of rides - instrumentally and melodically it's far from any of the "band" Songs:Ohia albums and more akin to the four-track early days. It's also far from the lazy comparisons to other lo-fidelity country miserablists like Palace and Smog as it's possible to be within the confinements of genre. Molina has a genuine knowledge of mood and the recreation of it through his idiosyncratic voice (who else could sing about both being "beside the city moon" and "empty black cat eyes" within the first three lines of a song?). It's appallingly lovely. It's a touching return-to-old for the long-running fans, yet at the same time not unapproachable for fans of the 70s Neil Young-aping Molina of new. As a beginners choice, it's not great - it'd be like choosing a brambly sidepath downtrodden and covered in nettles - i.e., in the general direction but not ideal when the main roads just a few minutes away, but interesting nonetheless. And as the timer clicks from 6:38 to 6:39 at the end of the ethereal "Long Desert Train", there's only one thing to clear up: where's the next station?

-Hannah Wright