Didn’t It Rain (Deluxe Edition)

by Songs: Ohia

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Nostro Oh - we actually can't select our fav track, unless it's one of the 4 tracks available to freely listen. So, here we go:
Cross the Road, Molina (Demo, Working Title: Chicago City Moon)

Am here for the demo tracks, if you've got everything Molina, these are worthy additions.

Favorite track: Two Blue Lights (Demo).

Reuben Goddard I've been somewhat numb recently. I've been trying to hide away often. I can't see or even comprehend what's quite wrong. I've done many mean things in my life, I feel weighted by guilt and regret. Something about 'didn't it rain' has really spoken to me. it might be that I'm in a transitional phase in my life. But that emptiness that comes with these transitions is harsh and nunbing. Every eord spoken on this album a lonely cry for solice and acceptance. Moving through spaces of loneliness. Favorite track: Blue Chicago Moon.

alvarfj Nobody sang the blues quite as earthly and affecting as Molina. Favorite track: Two Blue Lights.

Bugsy Rabot blue chicago moon

Philipp Diesenreiter - Little Hole Filled thumbnail

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Songs: Ohia 'Didn't It Rain' reissued on Deluxe 2xCD

Includes unlimited streaming of Didn’t It Rain (Deluxe Edition) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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Retail Black 2xLP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Songs: Ohia's classic album 'Didn't It Rain' reissued in deluxe 2xLP set.

Includes unlimited streaming of Didn’t It Rain (Deluxe Edition) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Didn't It Rain 07:52	buy track
2.	Steve Albini's Blues 05:52	buy track
3.	Ring the Bell 06:11	buy track
4.	Cross the Road, Molina 06:01	buy track
5.	Blue Factory Flame 08:30	buy track
6.	Two Blue Lights 02:15	buy track
7.	Blue Chicago Moon 06:47	buy track
8.	Didn't It Rain (Demo) 06:57	buy track
9.	Ring the Bell (Demo, Working Title: Depression No. 42) 06:48	buy track
10.	Cross the Road, Molina (Demo, Working Title: Chicago City Moon) 05:03	buy track
11.	Blue Factory Flame (Demo) 08:20	buy track
12.	Two Blue Lights (Demo) 03:03	buy track
13.	Blue Chicago Moon (Demo) 06:32	buy track
14.	The Gray Tower (Demo, Working Title: Waiting It's Whole Life) 04:28	buy track
15.	Spectral Alphabet (Demo) 05:05	buy track

about

'Didn't It Rain' is Jason Molina's first perfect record. Recorded live in a single room, with no overdubs and musicians creating their parts on the fly, the overall approach to the recording was nothing new for Molina. But something in the air and execution of 'Didn't It Rain' clearly sets it apart from his existing body of work. His albums had always been full of space, but never had Molina sculpted the space as masterfully as he does on 'Didn't It Rain'. Perhaps it is that Molina entered the session with fully written songs that allowed this emboldened confidence in chance. The creaks and scraping of strings are all part of the 'Didn't It Rain' choir. So when Molina hoots for another chorus during the album's eponymous opening gambit, it feels less an off-the-cuff call, and more an essential piece of the tone and structure. Midway through the same song, that which takes its name from a traditional piece popularized by Mahalia Jackson, we hear the long, low woosh of a passing bus. Distant traffic has forever been a trope of lo-fi, but here, it is a pristine woosh. The highest of fidelity and sure of purpose. The same can be said for Molina's always remarkable voice, here settling into a matured, assured, and subtly lowered tenor. It all adds up to something near in mood to Neil Young's song "On The Beach," and maybe even Boz Scagg's 1969 self-titled album laid to tape at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio.

'Didn't It Rain' is an ode to the Midwest Rust Belt under which Molina was born and Molina's newfound Chicago home. When we move to a new place, we must truly confront all our own weaknesses and strengths, and Molina puts that all on the table with this one. The album's triple-threat center pieces come by way of "Ring The Bell," "Cross The Road, Molina," and "Blue Factory Flame." Strung together, they present clearly Molina's specific set of mythological symbols that had been forming on previous recordings. It is as heady a middle section as I can recall. But the journey across these three songs — with their circling serpents, their neon-flame wreathed moons, their swinging blades, their debilitating emptiness — also feels like a cleansing, a catharsis, a sort of primal therapy.

While demo'd and recorded months before the events of 9/11, 'Didn't It Rain' does seem to somehow consider the mood of the time. It's surely an album about setting roots, but it also offers a moment of solace in a time of overwhelming uncertainty. Here, Molina's now well-known battle with depression aligns with an entire nation's moment of depression. While even more cryptic and spartan, Didn't It Rain's imagery and themes can be poetically linked to another 2002 Chicago-rooted album that tapped into the post-9/11 psyche, Wilco's 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'.

This expanded reissue presents Molina's home demos of the record, eight previously unreleased tracks, complete with a distant playground full of children chiming in the background for a few songs. The glorious juxtaposition of Molina's songs' desolation and the blissful playing of children is about as haunting as it gets, friends.

— Eric Deines, Bloomington, IN, August, 2014

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released December 2, 2014

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Songs: Ohia Chicago, Illinois

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