Secretly Canadian have announced a new Jason Molina record, Eight Gates is to be released on August 7th and is the last collection of solo studio recordings Molina made before he passed from complications related to alcoholism in 2013. The album was recorded in 2009 by Greg Norman at New Air Studios while Molina was in London. He had been in London as a student back in 95 and while it’s suggested that these fond memories fed the move, Erin Osmon’s biography on Molina, Riding with the Ghost, suggests this proved a difficult time for the singer who became increasingly isolated and withdrawn and, unable to express his sadness, he ‘crawled further inside himself’.
The album’s title takes its title from the seven old gates of London (Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate) – “Molina went ahead and called it eight, carving out a gate just for himself. The eighth gate was Molina’s way into London, a gate only passable in the mind.”
The album, again featuring the artwork of Will Schaff, features nine previously unheard songs and just listening to the brooding lead single Shadow Answers The Wall below, I find it hard to shake off the weight of the knowledge of his torment and isolation that he must have been experiencing around this time, something that’s made more prevalent by this being Mental Health Awareness Week. There’s a quote in Osmon’s biography which seems so apt, in which a friend of Mark Kozelek compared Molina to a Gregory Peck’s line from the film To Kill a Mockingbird:
“Kill all of the blue jays you want, but it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because all they do is sing their hearts out for us”.
Pre-Order and Save the album here: https://jasonmolina.ffm.to/eight-gates
Photo Credit: Aidan Moffat